‘Space Weather’ Creates New Mineral on Moon

A new mineral formed on the moon by repeated bombardments from meteorites and other space debris has been found in a meteorite that fell to Earth in 2000, researchers reported Monday.

The finding shows that “space weather” can help create materials not seen on Earth, they reported in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The new mineral is named hapkeite, which is made when iron and silicon are deposited with two parts iron and one part silicon, Mahesh Anand of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and colleagues reported.