Lunar Sample 14321, better known as "Big Bertha", is a

lunar sample Moon rock or lunar rock is rock originating from Earth's Moon. This includes lunar material collected during the course of human exploration of the Moon, and rock that has been ejected naturally from the Moon's surface and landed on Earth as ...

containing an embedded Earth-origin meteorite collected on the 1971

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31, 1971February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to land on the Moon, and the first to land in the lunar highlands. It was the last of the " H missions", landings at s ...

mission. It was found in the

Fra Mauro Fra Mauro, O.S.B. Cam., (c.1400–1464) was a Venetian cartographer who lived in the Republic of Venice. He created the most detailed and accurate map of the world up until that time, the Fra Mauro map. Mauro was a monk of the Camaldolese ...

region of the Moon. Big Bertha is the first discovered meteorite from Earth, and the embedded meteorite portion is the oldest known Earth rock. At , this

breccia Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of di ...

rock is the third largest Moon sample returned during the Apollo program, behind

Big Muley Lunar Sample 61016, better known as "Big Muley", is a lunar sample discovered and collected on the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 in the Descartes Highlands, on the rim of Plum crater, near Flag crater (Station 1). It is the largest sample returned fr ...

and Great Scott.

Discovery

Big Bertha was named after the famous large

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

German howitzer Big Bertha because it was the largest rock returned from the Moon up to that time. It was collected by Apollo 14 commander

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

near the rim of Cone Crater, during the second

EVA Eva or EVA may refer to: * Eva (name), a feminine given name Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters * Eva (Dynamite Entertainment), a comic book character by Dynamite Entertainment * Eva (''Devil May Cry''), Dante's mother in t ...

at station C1. Transcript from the Apollo 14 Lunar Surface Journal:

33:44:29Mitchell: (Garbled) help with that one? 33:44:30Shepard: That's all right, I think I got it. There's a football-size rock, Houston, coming out of this area, which will not be bagged. It appears to be the prevalent rock of the boulders of the area. Got it? 33:44:41Mitchell: Got it.

Earth rock

In January 2019, research showed that a fragment (

clast Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus,Essentials of Geology, 3rd Ed, Stephen Marshak, p. G-3 chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks ...

) embedded in Big Bertha has numerous characteristics that make it very likely to be a terrestrial (Earth) meteorite. Granite and quartz, which are commonly found on Earth but very rare to find on the Moon, were confirmed to exist in this fragment. To find the sample's age, the research team from Curtin University looked at bits of the mineral

zircon Zircon () is a mineral belonging to the group of nesosilicates and is a source of the metal zirconium. Its chemical name is zirconium(IV) silicate, and its corresponding chemical formula is Zr SiO4. An empirical formula showing some of the r ...

embedded in its structure. "By determining the age of zircon found in the sample, we were able to pinpoint the age of the host rock at about four billion years old, making it similar to the oldest rocks on Earth", researcher Alexander Nemchin said, adding that "the chemistry of the zircon in this sample is very different from that of every other zircon grain ever analyzed in lunar samples, and remarkably similar to that of zircons found on Earth". This means Big Bertha is both the first discovered terrestrial meteorite and the oldest known Earth rock. If the rock is indeed terrestrial, lunar geologist David Kring said that it can provide valuable information about the

Hadean The Hadean ( ) is a Eon (geology), geologic eon of History of Earth, Earth history preceding the Archean. On Earth, the Hadean began with the Formation of the Earth, planet's formation about 4.54 billion years ago (although the start of the H ...

eon. Big Bertha shows that Earth was impacted by asteroids massive enough to produce new meteors, and granitic rocks that make up Earth's continents were already forming. Geochemist Elizabeth Bell noted that the Moon might be a better place to look for ancient Earth rocks than Earth itself, as material erodes much slower on the Moon's surface than it does on Earth, and Kring suggested the discovery of Big Bertha's nature as an Earth-origin meteorite may compel other scientists to search through Apollo lunar samples.

References

{{Apollo program Lunar samples Apollo 14 Meteorites found on the Moon Meteorites by name Alan Shepard

Discovery

Earth rock

See also

References