What does a moon meteorite look like? Have you got any pictures?

Lunar meteorite is a rock splashed from the moon to the earth by asteroid impact, and it is an important object to study the material composition and evolution history of the moon. Except for a few rock types with crystal structure, most moon meteorites are clastic rocks, which are mainly divided into three types: highland plagioclase breccia, luna basaltic breccia and highland plagioclase-luna basaltic mixed breccia.

When a large asteroid or comet collides with the surface of the moon, its surface material can reach the speed of escaping from the moon (2.4km/s) and enter space, and some of it is captured by the earth and landed on the earth, which shows that lunar meteorites are closely related to the impact crater event on the surface of the moon, especially the low-angle impact of large asteroids is more conducive to the escape of ejected materials. Because the moon has undergone magmatic differentiation, the moon meteorite belongs to the spherulite meteorite.

Extended data

The discovery of lunar meteorites began in the 1980s. The first moon meteorite Alha8 1005 was confirmed in 1982 after Apollo and luna planned to return 10. This meteorite was discovered by the American Meteorite Expedition (ANSMET) in Mount Hill, Allen, Antarctica. Meteorite samples were sent to Houston Space Center for processing and storage. Because the center is responsible for the processing and storage of lunar samples, researchers are familiar with lunar samples. When processing this sample, they found that its structural characteristics are very similar to those of the moon sample, which prompted them to consider that the ALHA 8 1005 meteorite may come from the moon.

In fact, before this sample, the Japanese Antarctic expedition team found a lunar meteorite Y79 1 197 on the Yamato. Due to lack of experience at that time, this meteorite was mistaken for a meteorite. According to the confirmed time sequence, Y79/KOOC-0//KOOC-0/97, Y82/KOOC-0/92 and Y82/KOOC-0/93 are the second, third and fourth lunar meteorites respectively. In addition, Y793 169 and EET8752 1 meteorite were once mistaken for plagioclase meteorites, and later confirmed as lunar meteorites.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Moon Meteorite