One of the oldest Moon rocks
One of the oldest Moon rocks
For the Apollo 16 mission, a location in the central highlands of the lunar near side was selected. One goal was to bring samples from the rocks found there, the oldest on the Moon, to Earth. The objective was to determine when the Moon originated and when its first crust was formed. Sample 60025 is an iron-rich anorthosite and one of the three oldest rocks brought to Earth by the six Apollo missions. It is a feldspar rock with a high content of aluminium and calcium that solidified 4.36 billion years ago, reflecting the crystallisation of an early crust covering the magma ocean. Astronauts John Young and Charles Duke picked up the rock just 14 metres from the Lunar Module. It is almost 20 centimetres across and weighs 1836 grams. It is coarse-grained and a small section is coated by black ‘glass’, which solidified very quickly as a melt after an impact event and did not form any crystals.
