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Anorthosite Rock 60025 was collected at the Apollo 16 landing site in the lunar highlands. It is a light-colored rock called anorthosite. An anorthosite is a rock made up almost entirely of plagioclase feldspar, a common rock-forming mineral on Earth. This rock is dated at 4.2 billion years old, much older than the lunar basalts. |
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Breccia Rock 79135 comes from the Apollo 17 site which was called Taurus-Littrow after the Taurus Mountains and the Littrow Crater nearby. This rock is called a breccia. A breccia is a rock made up of angular fragments of other rocks. Lots of the lunar rocks that were brought back are breccias. This is because the lunar breccias were formed by all the impacts on the Moon's surface. When you look at the Moon you can see how heavily cratered and battered its surface is, and this is reflected in the rocks. |
Photo credits: Apollo 16 anorthosite = NASA; Apollo 17 breccia = NASA #S73-15446 Jump to pages: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
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