12009 - Olivine basalt
Collection:
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Fact sheet

12009 - Olivine basalt

Sample 12009 is an olivine vitrophyre collected during the Apollo 12 mission to the Moon. The rock is rapidly-cooled basalt that formed skeletal crystals in a glass matrix. The sample has been dated at 3.2 billion years, but it was brought to the surface by a meteorite impact much more recently since it has a cosmic ray exposure age of 136 million years.

In thin section, the sample consists of skeletal phenocrysts of olivine (0.3-1.0 millimetres) and pyroxene (0.2-0.8 millimetres) set in a matrix of microcrystalline devitrified glass and small crystals of olivine, pyroxene and illmenite that crystallised from the melt.

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

About this collection

Sample details

Type
igneous
Category
mare basalt
Rock-forming mineral
olivine
pyroxene
ilmenite
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: