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Lunar Meteorites: The geological legacy
Paperback
Astronomy & SpaceGeneral Science
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ISBN13: 9798172667619
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 8 2026
Pages: 404
Weight: 1.19
Height: 0.83 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 8 2026
Pages: 404
Weight: 1.19
Height: 0.83 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Lunar Meteorites: The Geological Legacy is a work dedicated entirely to one of the most extraordinary categories of extraterrestrial materials available to science and collectors: rocks from the Moon that have naturally reached Earth.
Far from considering lunar meteorites as a homogeneous group, this book reveals the enormous geological diversity that exists among them. Feldspathic breccias, basalts, gabbros, KREEP materials, regolith breccias, impact-melt breccias, mingled breccias, troctolitic lithologies, ultramafic components, and exceptional materials are analyzed from a perspective that combines planetary geology, petrography, geochemistry, impact history, scientific classification, and specialized collecting.
Far from considering lunar meteorites as a homogeneous group, this book reveals the enormous geological diversity that exists among them. Feldspathic breccias, basalts, gabbros, KREEP materials, regolith breccias, impact-melt breccias, mingled breccias, troctolitic lithologies, ultramafic components, and exceptional materials are analyzed from a perspective that combines planetary geology, petrography, geochemistry, impact history, scientific classification, and specialized collecting.
The book traces the entire process that transforms a lunar rock into a meteorite: from the formation and differentiation of the Moon, the creation of its crust and basaltic seas, to the impacts capable of ejecting material into space, its interplanetary journey, atmospheric entry, and subsequent identification on Earth. It also explains how we know a rock truly originates from the Moon, what techniques allow us to classify it, how to interpret its minerals, textures, isotopic ages, and modal compositions, and what information it may preserve about lunar regions not yet directly explored.
One of the book's main arguments is that there is no single type of lunar meteorite, and therefore no single way to assess its rarity. The word lunar identifies the parent body, but behind it lie materials with radically different known masses, ages, textures, compositions, and levels of representativeness. This diversity has direct consequences for science, for collecting, and also for understanding its historical and commercial value. The book pays special attention to the shock and internal transformation processes of rocks, including brecciation, localized melting, intergranular melt films, recrystallization, vesiculation, and different generations of impact melt. These structures allow us to observe how a lunar rock can simultaneously preserve its original texture and the processes that began to transform it during large impacts.
The comparison between meteorites and samples returned by Apollo, Luna, and Chang'e also reveals how our image of the Moon has evolved. The missions provide samples with known locations; meteorites offer a much broader natural sampling and can represent regions that no mission has visited. Together, they reveal a Moon far more heterogeneous than we initially imagined.
The work also addresses the lunar meteorite as an object of scientific collection. It analyzes criteria of lithology, texture, mass, fusion crust, cut surfaces, clasts, documentation, traceability, pairings, preparation, and conservation. It also explains why the commercial price of a sample should not be confused with its scientific value and why reducing all lunar diversity to a simple price-per-gram table is geologically meaningless.
In a particularly personal chapter, José GarcÃa presents his own lunar classifications, officially incorporated into the international registry, explaining their petrographic, mineralogical, and scientific characteristics, as well as the significance of contributing to the international understanding of lunar materials through these classifications.
LUNAR METEORITES: THE GEOLOGICAL LEGACY is aimed at collectors, students, researchers, meteorite enthusiasts, geologists, mineralogists, and readers interested in planetary science who wish to understand what a lunar meteorite truly represents beyond its origin.
Each sample is different. Each lithology preserves a distinct history. Each clast may come from a different geological episode.
And each fragment is, in a way, a region of the Moon.
One of the book's main arguments is that there is no single type of lunar meteorite, and therefore no single way to assess its rarity. The word lunar identifies the parent body, but behind it lie materials with radically different known masses, ages, textures, compositions, and levels of representativeness. This diversity has direct consequences for science, for collecting, and also for understanding its historical and commercial value. The book pays special attention to the shock and internal transformation processes of rocks, including brecciation, localized melting, intergranular melt films, recrystallization, vesiculation, and different generations of impact melt. These structures allow us to observe how a lunar rock can simultaneously preserve its original texture and the processes that began to transform it during large impacts.
The comparison between meteorites and samples returned by Apollo, Luna, and Chang'e also reveals how our image of the Moon has evolved. The missions provide samples with known locations; meteorites offer a much broader natural sampling and can represent regions that no mission has visited. Together, they reveal a Moon far more heterogeneous than we initially imagined.
The work also addresses the lunar meteorite as an object of scientific collection. It analyzes criteria of lithology, texture, mass, fusion crust, cut surfaces, clasts, documentation, traceability, pairings, preparation, and conservation. It also explains why the commercial price of a sample should not be confused with its scientific value and why reducing all lunar diversity to a simple price-per-gram table is geologically meaningless.
In a particularly personal chapter, José GarcÃa presents his own lunar classifications, officially incorporated into the international registry, explaining their petrographic, mineralogical, and scientific characteristics, as well as the significance of contributing to the international understanding of lunar materials through these classifications.
LUNAR METEORITES: THE GEOLOGICAL LEGACY is aimed at collectors, students, researchers, meteorite enthusiasts, geologists, mineralogists, and readers interested in planetary science who wish to understand what a lunar meteorite truly represents beyond its origin.
Each sample is different. Each lithology preserves a distinct history. Each clast may come from a different geological episode.
And each fragment is, in a way, a region of the Moon.
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