A Partial Slice of Lunar Meteorite NWA 6950

This specimen is a piece of the Moon that was blasted off the lunar surface by an asteroid collision and later landed on Earth. A total of 1649 g of this meteorite were recovered from Northwest Africa. Lunar meteorites are among the most exotic objects on our planet; about only 0.3% of all meteorites recovered are lunar in origin; more significantly, only about 100 kg of meteorites originating from the Moon are known to exist. A significant percentage of this material is owned by governmental institutions and there is little material in private collections. NWA 6950 is a gabbro, the coarse-grained, slowly cooled, equivalent of a basalt. NWA 6950 was classified by Dr. Anthony Irving, among the world’s foremost classifiers of planetary material. This is a partial slice of a slowly cooled igneous rock from the Moon.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue note.