When 18th Century natural philosophers first began to accept the notion that meteorites came from outer space, they believed that every bit of this material was blasted off the Moon by powerful volcanic eruptions. They could not have been more incorrect. We now know that most meteorites originate from the asteroid belt and that lunar meteorites arrived on Earth after having been ejected off the lunar surface by energetic asteroid impacts into Earth-crossing orbits. The vast majority of the craters seen on the Moon are the result of such impacts. Samples of the Moon are among the rarest naturally occurring substances on Earth. Of all lunar meteorites, NWA (North West Africa) 482 stands out as among the “freshest” (least weathered) and is also one of the few oriented examples. Composed of a single one kilo mass, NWA 482 was recovered by Berbers in the Sahara near the Algerian/Moroccan border. It was only the 482nd meteorite to be recovered, classified and published in the Meteorite Bulletin — the scientific journal of record. Researchers determined NWA 482 is a crystalline impact-melt breccia with lunar highland affinities. Repeated impacts upon the lunar surface resulted in the crushing and remelting of material responsible for this meteorite’s appearance. NWA 482 has been studied by scientists throughout the world and Dr. Anthony Irving, a former NASA researcher and among the most prolific classification experts of lunar and Martian meteorites, verified that NWA 482 closely resembles a Moon rock (sample # 60015) returned to Earth by Apollo 16 in 1972. This is a thin triangular partial slice with one long curve of fusion crust. Fine grains of impact melt course through the smoky white matrix.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue.

This meteorite was analyzed and classified by Drs. Alan Rubin and Paul Warren at UCLA and their findings underwent peer review prior to publication in the 85th edition of the Meteoritical Bulletin.


19 x 11 x 3mm (0.75 x 0.5 x 0.1 in.) and 1.27g