Lunar Meteorite: Northwest Africa 15528

from The Meteoritical Bulletin, No. 112

Northwest Africa 15528 (NWA 15528)

(Northwestern Africa)
Purchased: 2017 May
Mass: 27 g (2 pieces)

Lunar meteorite (feldspathic breccia)

History: Purchased by Huapei Wang and Ziyao Wang in May 2017 from a Moroccan dealer at the Hunan Mineral & Gem Show in Chenzhou City, China.

Petrography: (A. Irving, UWS and P. Carpenter, WUSL) Breccia composed predominantly of mineral clasts of anorthite, olivine, low-Ca pyroxene, pigeonite and augite within a fine grained, partly vesicular matrix containing ilmenite, medium-Ti chromite, kamacite and troilite. Some olivine-bearing lithic breccia clasts are present.

Geochemistry: Olivine (Fa19.7-65.6, FeO/MnO = 81-108, N = 6), low-Ca pyroxene (Fs22.8-54.1Wo4.5-4.2, FeO/MnO = 55-61, N = 3), pigeonite (Fs44.0Wo6.6, FeO/MnO = 57), augite (Fs10.0-16.4Wo44.3-41.2, FeO/MnO = 41-54, N = 3), anorthite (An96.2-97.9Or0.1-0.0, N = 4)

Classification: Lunar  (feldspathic breccia).

Specimens: 5.75 g in the form of a polished endcut at UWB; remainder with Huapei Wang and WangZ.

Randy Says…

I have not studied Northwest Africa 15528. See the discussion in the References section below.

More Information

Meteoritical Bulletin Database

NWA 15528

References

Liu R., He H., Smith T., Ye H., Wang H., Zhang X., Dei S., Liu Z, Yang P., Xue D., Cao T., Li J., Jiang X., He Y., and Lu. C. (2023) Impact history and origin of lunar meteorite Northwest Africa 15528. Science China Earth Sciences (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1049-4
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-022-1049-4#citeas

1-June-2023. I have not downloaded the article from the Springer link above ($39.95) but four Supplementary Files can be downloaded for free. Three of the files contain data and figures but all three, according to the titles, are data and figures for NWA 11303, a meteorite that I have analyzed and suspect to be a member of the NWA 8046 clan.

The full text of the article is available free here, however:
https://www.sciengine.com/SCES/doi/10.1007/s11430-022-1049-4

Section 4.1: “Korotev and Irving (2021) considered that NWA 15528 belongs to the typical feldspathic lunar meteorite NWA 8046 pairing group.” No, K&I did not study NWA 15528; the name was not approved until January of 2023, 2 years after K&I (2021) was published so we had nothing to say about NWA 15528.

Curiously, I was able to download a preprint (dated December 2022, DOI: 10.1007/s11430-022-1049-4) from Research Gate entitled “Impact History and origin of lunar meteorite Northwest Africa 11303” with the same author list and very similar abstract to the sciengine NWA 15528 paper:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366658484…

Note that 5th author Huapei Wang is listed as a holder of part of the main mass of NWA 15528, but not of NWA 11303, in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database.

Clearly, there is some name confusion here. I suspect that 27-g NWA 15528 was the meteorite studied but that most of the writing of the manuscript was done before the meteorite had received an official name but for some reason the authors thought it was one of the several pieces of 6000-g NWA 11303.
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