Breccia

Breccia

This rock is made of fragments of other rocks that were broken by collisions of meteorites with the Moon. The fragments were heated by the collisions that broke them apart, so that sharp edges melted and stuck to other grains to form a new rock, composed entirely of broken rocks and smaller mineral grains, called a breccia (breck’sha).

Breccias like this one were produced when the original crust of the Moon was completely broken up by meteorite impacts. Pieces of this crust now exist as rock fragments in these breccias, and for this reason many of the larger fragments (about 1 cm or 0.4 inches across) are subjects of intense study by several of the 100 scientific laboratories throughout the world working with lunar samples.

The chip in this disk weighs about 1 gram and was removed from rock number 67016, which weighed 4262 grams (9.4 lbs.). The Apollo 16 astronauts collected this rock near North Ray Crater, a deep crater 700 meters in diameter. The rock was a part of a buried layer of breccias and evidently was cast out of a crater during the impact of a meteorite on the surface of the Moon.

This rock is made of fragments of other rocks that were broken by collisions of meteorites with the Moon. The fragments were heated by the collisions that broke them apart, so that sharp edges melted and stuck to other grains to form a new rock, composed entirely of broken rocks and smaller mineral grains, called a breccia (breck’sha).

Breccias like this one were produced when the original crust of the Moon was completely broken up by meteorite impacts. Pieces of this crust now exist as rock fragments in these breccias, and for this reason many of the larger fragments (about 1 cm or 0.4 inches across) are subjects of intense study by several of the 100 scientific laboratories throughout the world working with lunar samples.

The chip in this disk weighs about 1 gram and was removed from rock number 67016, which weighed 4262 grams (9.4 lbs.). The Apollo 16 astronauts collected this rock near North Ray Crater, a deep crater 700 meters in diameter. The rock was a part of a buried layer of breccias and evidently was cast out of a crater during the impact of a meteorite on the surface of the Moon.