File:NWA 11273.jpg

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Understanding the Moon by its Missionaries — NWA 11273

Summary

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Description
English: Discovered in 2017 in Algeria, NWA 11273 is a beautiful Lunar meteorite, a feldspathic regolith breccia from the lunar highlands. It consists of the usual menagerie of mineral clasts mixed with rare basalt and glass fragments, all smashed together, as is common on the lunar surface.

These rocks consist of abundant white clasts of anorthositic rock and minor dark clasts of highland basalts, combined with various mineral and glass fragments, and mixed with a dark matrix of solidified rock powder formed under high pressures. This regolith also contains traces of meteoritic material from many impactors bombarding the lunar surface, as well as characteristic amounts of solar wind-implanted noble gases (unshielded by any atmosphere).

This particular meteorite has been the subject of extensive analysis by X-ray fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy (discovering silicates, phosphates and sulphates) and backscattered electron (BSE) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) which made a novel discovery regarding lunar geology and fluid flows beneath the lunar surface:

“the newly observed olivine veinlets in NWA 11273 are likely formed by secondary deposition from a lunar fluid, rather than by crystallization from a high-temperature silicate melt. Such fluid could be sulfur- and phosphorous-poor and likely had an endogenic origin on the Moon. The new occurrence of secondary olivine veinlets in breccia NWA 11273 reveals that the fluid mobility and deposition could be a previously underappreciated geological process on the Moon.”

Imaging study examples and a map of likely meteorite origin are below in the comments, as well as a diagram of the sub-surface fluid flow hypothesis.
Date
Source https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/51940991927/
Author Steve Jurvetson

Licensing

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w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Attribution: Steve Jurvetson
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by jurvetson at https://flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/51940991927. It was reviewed on 17 March 2022 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

17 March 2022

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