Apollo Moon Rocks at the Natural History Museum in London
The Natural History Museum in London hosts two Moon rocks collected by astronauts during the Apollo missions — one from Apollo 16, and one from Apollo 17.
The Apollo 16 rock is called anorthositic breccia. It is mainly composed of a mineral called anorthite, a sodium-rich feldspar that gives the sample its light colour. This is the type of rock that makes up the lunar highlands — the high-albedo regions visible on the Moon. A breccia is a rock made of fragments of previously broken material, now cemented together by processes involving high temperatures and pressures. The dark rind of the rock is glass, formed by space weathering processes that this rock endured over billions of years.
Apollo rocks have distinctive numeric code identifiers. The Apollo 16 sample on display at the NHM is 60015,87. The figure below shows how the original rock (sample 60015) was cut to produce smaller subsamples, each assigned their own identifier.
The Apollo 17 rock on display in the Treasures Gallery is a small fragment of a basaltic rock. Basaltic rocks are dark volcanic rocks that make up most of the dark areas on the lunar surface — called lunar maria (singular: mare, Latin for "sea"). These rocks come from ancient lava flows that flooded large lunar basins created by major impacts early in the Moon's geological history.
Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt collected this rock (sample 70017) near the lunar module. It was later dubbed 'The Goodwill Rock', as fragments were distributed to 135 nations around the world as a symbol of peace (find out where these fragments are). Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the Moon, gave a speech just before boarding the lunar module, dedicated to the young people of Earth and expressing a desire that they "live in peace and harmony in the future" (watch that moment here).
Where exactly are these two Apollo rocks in the Natural History Museum? Here is how to find them: