MoonFire // Lunar Rock Edition No. 1,968 ‘NWA 4936’

Limited to just 12 copies, numbered 1,958–1,969, the Lunar Rock Edition of Norman Mailer’s MoonFire is designed by Marc Newson. His concept was inspired by the Apollo 11 LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). Each book is contained in a case made from a single piece of aluminum—its surface an actual 3-D topography of the Moon—and comes with a unique piece of lunar rock.

Meteorites from the Moon are exceptionally rare. There are fewer than 100 lunar meteorites known with a total combined weight of approximately 725 kilograms, making them millions of times rarer than gem grade diamonds. However, most lunar meteorites reside in museum collections and research institutions, leaving only 150 kilograms or so available to individual collectors worldwide. Since acquiring an Apollo moon rock is virtually impossible, the only realistic way to own a piece of the moon is by acquiring a lunar meteorite.

For the sophisticated collector, the lunar meteorite offered here possesses an especially unusual pedigree: NWA 4936’s uncommonly heavy density is due to an unusually high iron content and it is the first lunar meteorite whose constituents match the regolith (soil sample) returned to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission. NWA 4936 contains a large amount of free iron—so much so, that it is ferromagnetic, an extremely rare attribute of lunar specimens. Every bit of surface area of this lunar specimen—apart from the cut surface—is covered with fusion crust characterized by a natural desert varnish (a natural sheen which results from having been blasted by the wind and sand for many hundreds of years). This specimen is from the Macovich Collection of Meteorites—one of the most acclaimed private meteorite collections in the world. The Smithsonian, The Academy of Sciences in Moscow, The Natural History Museum (London), the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris), and the American Museum of Natural History (New York) all have specimens with a Macovich provenance.

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