Lunar Meteorites

Lunar Meteorites

Description

This page concerns information and references to lunar meteorites. Such rare occurrences are the debris end-products (dust to rocks to blocks) produced by impactors striking the Moon and ejecting them off into space at great speeds. The ejected products must exceed, or be very close to, the escape velocity of the Moon (~ 2.38 km/sec) in order for them to leave the surface, where, depending on the angle and direction in which they were initially ejected, can end up in several orbital configurations. The first orbital configuration may be that of the Moon itself, however, if captured by the Earth or Sun's gravitational fields respectively, they could end up spending years to tens to thousands to millions of years before in orbit before they finaly fall to the surface of each. Some objects, of course, might also end up in regions of the outer planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, or, being completely lost to deep space – never to be seen again. Whatever the orbital configuration, however, when such lunar fragments pass through our local space, and, land on Earth's surface, they are then considered lunar meteorites. So far todate (as of writing 10 May 2011), upto 60 kg in mass of all lunar meteorites have been catalogued, but, there are a lot more out there waiting to be discovered, or declared. - JohnMoore2 May 9, 2011
 
 

Images

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• Credit: (Top) Example-list of lunar meteorites available from the Dept., of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis; (bottom) two Antarctic lunar meteorites – left-most NASA, right-most Dr Carlton Allen - Curator and Manager of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office, NASA Johnson Space Centre.

Additional Information

• List of lunar meteorites from the Dept., of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis – a wonderful resource and description by Dr Randy Korotev.
• The Meteoritical Society – list of meteorites with additional information on each.
• The Lunar Meteorite Compendium – NASA.
• Encyclomedia of Meteorites.
• ANSMET – The Antarctic Search for Meteorites.
• Planetary Meteorites – Norbert Classen’s website containing some very nice images of lunar meteorites.
• Chladni’s Heirs.

LPOD Articles

Bibliography

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• Alan Hills A81005 – NASA

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