tranquillityite
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Tranquillityite is a silicate mineral with formula (Fe2+)8Ti3Zr2 Si3O24. It is mostly composed of iron, oxygen, silicon, zirconium and titanium with smaller fractions of yttrium and calcium. It is named after the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), the place on the Moon where the rock samples were found during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. It was the last mineral brought from the Moon which was thought to be unique, with no counterpart on Earth, until it was discovered in Australia in 2011.
Key facts
- Mineral.name
- Tranquillityite
- Mineral.category
- Silicate mineral (nesosilicate group)
- Mineral.formula
- (Fe2+)8Ti3Zr2 Si3O24
- Mineral.IMAsymbol
- Trq
- Mineral.strunz
- 9.AG.90
- Mineral.dana
- 78.07.16.01 (Unclassified silicates)
- Mineral.system
- Hexagonal Unknown space group
- Mineral.unit cell
- a = 11.69, c = 22.25 [Å] Z = 6; V = 2,633.24 Å3
- Mineral.color
- Gray, dark red-brown in transmitted light
- Mineral.habit
- Lath shaped grains generally found as inclusions in other minerals or interstitial (<0.1% in weight)
- Mineral.luster
- Submetalic
- Mineral.diaphaneity
- Opaque to semitransparent
- Mineral.opticalprop
- Biaxial
- Mineral.refractive
- nα = 2.120
- Mineral.2V
- 40°
- Mineral.pleochroism
- No
- Mineral.density
- 4.7 ± 0.1 g/cm3
- Mineral.impurities
- Y, Hf, Al, Cr, Nb, Nd, Mn, Ca
via Wikipedia infobox
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Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Discovery
- Properties
- See also
- References
- External links
Tranquillityite is a silicate mineral with formula (Fe2+)8Ti3Zr2 Si3O24. It is mostly composed of iron, oxygen, silicon, zirconium and titanium with smaller fractions of yttrium and calcium. It is named after the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), the place on the Moon where the rock samples were found during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission. It was the last mineral brought from the Moon which was thought to be unique, with no counterpart on Earth, until it was discovered in Australia in 2011.
==Discovery== In 1970, materials scientists found a new unnamed Fe-Ti-Zr silicate mineral containing rare earths and Y in lunar rock sample 10047. The first detailed analysis of the mineral was published in 1971 and the name "tranquillityite" was proposed and later accepted by the International Mineralogical Association. It was later found in lunar rock samples from all Apollo missions. Samples were dated using Pb/Pb ion probe techniques.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “tranquillityite” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.