10085 - Coarse grained basalt
Collection:
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Microscope
Click the microscope button to view a thin section for this sample.
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Fact sheet

10085 - Coarse grained basalt

Sample 10085 contains the coarse fines (> 1 mm) that remained after sieving a portion of regolith sample 10002. Approximately 250 thin sections were made from 10085 and these were widely distributed during the early allocations of lunar samples. The first anorthosites were found in this sample, however our sample is almost entirely lunar basalt. Other investigators have estimated that 37% of sample 10085 is basalt. The remainder is soil breccia (52%), glass (4%), anorthosite (2%), anorthosite glass (1.5%) and anorthosite breccia (1.5%).

Our sample mainly contains plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene and ilmenite (opaque crystals) with minor amounts of cristobalite and troilite also present (the latter visible as small yellowish crystals in reflected light). Note that the sample is slightly thick, so plagioclase feldspar shows yellowish colours in transmitted light instead of the "normal" shades of grey.

Further details of this and other Apollo samples are here: http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/

About this collection

The Apollo 11 samples create an iconic collection since they were the first rocks collected by humankind that were returned to Earth from another solar system body. The Apollo 11 team collected and returned 22 kg of rock and soil samples.

Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on 16 July 1969. An estimated 530 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event as he took "...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on 20 July 1969.

Sample details

Collection: Apollo 11
Type
igneous
Rock-forming mineral
plagioclase
feldspar
pyroxene
ilmenite
Accessory minerals
cristobalite
troilite
metallic iron
Category guide  
Category Guide
Title
Refers to any word or phrase that appears in the individual rock names. Names are generally descriptive; they allow users to search for broad terms like ‘granite’ as well as more specific names such as ‘breccia’. However, the adjacent descriptions of the specimens captures a wider range of general words and phrases and is a more powerful search tool.
Description
Refers to any word or phrase that appears anywhere in the descriptions of the specimens
Accessory minerals
Minerals that occur in very low abundance in a rock. They are usually not visible with the naked eye and contribute perhapssver, they often dominate the rare elements such as platinum group metals.
Rock-forming minerals
Minerals that make up the bulk of all rock samples and are also the ones used in rock classi?cation.
Timescale
Selecting one or more period, for example 'Jurassic'.
Theme
A term used to group together related samples that are not already gathered into a single Collection. For instance, there is a ‘SW England granites’ theme that includes such rock types as granite, hydrothermal breccia, skarn and vein samples.
Category
A general term used to label a rock sample. It is a useful way of grouping similar samples throughout a collection. Category names are often, but not exclusively, common rock names (e.g. granite, basalt, dolerite, gabbro, greisen, skarn, gneiss, amphibolite, limestone, sandstone).
Owner
The owner of the sample that appears in the collection. For example, NASA owns all the samples that appear in the Moon Rocks collection
We would like to thank the following for the use of this sample: