Ever heard someone saying, "I will bring the moon for you?" Well, people who actually want the moon can now grab a piece of it.
The famous Christie's auction house is selling a piece of the Moon that is bigger than the rocks Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth. In a news release circulated by the Christie's, it was known that the lunar meteorite, known as NWA 12691, fell to Earth in a meteor shower and was found two years ago in the Sahara Desert.
On the entire Earth, only about 650 kgs of lunar meteorites are known to exist making Moon rocks among the rarest substances on Earth. This example is the fifth largest piece of the Moon on Earth, larger than any returned by the Apollo programme.
The piece is available for immediate purchase
The value of the piece is a whopping £2 million; the specimen is available for immediate purchase via Christie's Private Sales.
When lunar meteorites blast off the Lunar surface and collide with an asteroid or comet, they arrive on Earth. Similar impacts created the large craters that lie on the surface of the Moon. This particular meteorite was part of a large meteorite shower spanning the Western Saharan, Algerian and Mauritanian borders, responsible for nearly half of all known lunar meteorites.
Different NWA numbers were assigned to about 30 different meteorites after they were collected, analysed and classified. It was believed that they might be from different events and represent different lunar samples; but it has been determined that they all originate from the same lunar impact event.
James Hyslop, Christie's Head of Science & Natural History was quoted as saying that, "There aren't even a handful of larger lunar meteorites: this is the fifth largest known. Nothing brought back by the Apollo Missions is as large. It is really an incredible opportunity to acquire a world class specimen from the Moon."
The distance travelled by this piece of Moon is at least 239,000 miles through space before falling to Earth. The statement said that from the same meteor shower, about 30 meteorites have been found in Northwest Africa.
Hyslop added that all previous meteorites would fit your hand but this one is over 10 times larger. It weighs 30 pounds (13.5 kg).
