12022 - Ilmenite basalt
Collection:
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Click the microscope button to view a thin section for this sample.
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Fact sheet

12022 - Ilmenite basalt

Sample 12022 is medium-grained porphyritic Lunar Mare basalt collected during the Apollo 12 mission. The sample has been dated at 3.2 billion years and was probably brought to the surface of the Moon by a meteorite impact 200 million years ago.

The thin section contains phenocrysts of olivine and pyroxene (augite and pigeonite). The groundmass consists of feathery intergrowths of plagioclase feldspar, ilmenite, pyroxene and a small amount of glass. Ilmenite has an interesting cross-cutting, parallel, skeletal habit. Accessory minerals include chromite, ulvospinel and metallic iron.

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

About this collection

Sample details

Type
igneous
Rock-forming mineral
pyroxene
olivine
ilmenite
Accessory minerals
chromite
ulvospinel
metallic iron
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: