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 a ...

collected on the 1971

Apollo 14 Apollo 14 (January 31February 9, 1971) was the eighth crewed mission in the United States Apollo program, the third to Moon landing, land on the Moon, and the first to land in the Geology of the Moon#Highlands, lunar highlands. It was the las ...

mission. It was found in the

Fra Mauro Fra Mauro, O.S.B. Cam., (c.1400–1464) was an Italian ( 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 Ca ...

region of the Moon. At , this

breccia Breccia ( , ; ) is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or Rock (geology), rocks cementation (geology), cemented together by a fine-grained matrix (geology), matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language ...

rock is the third largest Moon sample returned during the

Apollo program The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in sp ...

, 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. Big Bertha contains an embedded fragment of granite-like rock which may have been ejected from the Earth by a

meteorite A meteorite is a rock (geology), rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical ...

impact billions of years ago. If this origin were to be confirmed, that fragment would be the oldest known Earth rock. This claim has been disputed, however.Paul H. Warren, Alan E. Rubin (2020): "Trace element and textural evidence favoring lunar, not terrestrial, origin of the mini-granite in Apollo sample 14321". ''Icarus'', volume 347, article 113771.

Discovery

Big Bertha was named after the famous large

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

German

howitzer The howitzer () is an artillery weapon that falls between a cannon (or field gun) and a mortar. It is capable of both low angle fire like a field gun and high angle fire like a mortar, given the distinction between low and high angle fire break ...

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. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he became the List of Apollo astronauts#Apollo astr ...

near the rim of Cone Crater, during the second EVA 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

Like many rocks found on the surface of the Moon, Big Berta is a

, an assemblage of smaller rock fragments (

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 b ...

s) welded together by meteorite impacts. In January 2019, it was observed that one of the embedded fragments, about 2 cm wide and weighing about 1.8 g, consisted of

felsite Felsite is a very fine-grained volcanic rock that may or may not contain larger crystals. Felsite is a field term for a light-colored rock that typically requires petrographic examination or chemical analysis for more precise definition. Color ...

, a type of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

that is relatively rare on the Moon. Measurement of

cerium Cerium is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Ce and atomic number 58. It is a hardness, soft, ductile, and silvery-white metal that tarnishes when exposed to air. Cerium is the second element in the lanthanide series, and while it ...

and

titanium Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

ions in minute

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 th ...

grains and

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

crystals contained in that fragment were said to be inconsistent with a lunar origin, but consistent with a terrestrial origin. The fragment could presumably have been ejected from the Earth by a large meteorite impact. The analysis of other trace elements in the zircon grains indicated that they formed about four billion years ago, during Earth's

Hadean The Hadean ( ) is the first and oldest of the four geologic eons of Earth's history, starting with the planet's formation about 4.6 billion years ago (estimated 4567.30 ± 0.16 million years ago set by the age of the oldest solid material ...

eon. If confirmed, that result would make the fragment the oldest known Earth rock and the first meteorite from Earth found in another celestial body. The authors of the analysis 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 that other such fragments may be embedded in Apollo samples. However, a more recent study disputes the terrestrial origin claim, observing that measurement of other trace elements (including

gallium Gallium is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Discovered by the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, elemental gallium is a soft, silvery metal at standard temperature and pressure. ...

germanium Germanium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically ...

zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...

barium Barium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2 and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal. Because of its high chemical reactivity, barium is never found in nature as a free element. Th ...

and

tantalum Tantalum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ta and atomic number 73. It is named after Tantalus, a figure in Greek mythology. Tantalum is a very hard, ductility, ductile, lustre (mineralogy), lustrous, blue-gray transition ...

) in those zircon inclusions deviate significantly from those typically found in terrestrial granite rocks, and suggest instead a lunar origin.

References

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

Discovery

Earth rock

See also

References