A Eureka Springs man who is a renowned meteorite hunter said a laboratory confirmed Thursday that an object he raised more than $5,000 to buy is a rare lunar meteorite.
It was found in the Sahara desert by a Moroccan nomad, said Steve Arnold, who raised the money through a campaign on Kickstarter.com, a crowd-sourced fundraising website.
The campaign ended last week with 53 backers and a total of $5,246 raised. Donations tapered off quickly after the goal of $5,000 was reached Aug. 21, Arnold said.
So far, 104 lunar meteorites have been scientifically identified, Arnold said. He expects his meteorite to be the 105th.
The one Arnold bought is about the size of a plum. It also includes seven much smaller fragments that appear to be from the same meteorite.
Arnold's store, Meteorites and More in Eureka Springs, sells meteorites for prices varying from $5 to more than $250,000 for a 430-pound pallasite meteorite.
Arnold was co-host of Meteorite Men, a Science Channel television show about meteorite hunting. The show aired for three seasons before being canceled in 2012.
Arnold said he was contacted by a "reputable and honest" meteorite dealer in Morocco. The dealer sent Arnold the meteorite -- a feldspathic breccia lunar meteorite -- to examine. Arnold sent it to a lab in Colorado to verify its origin.
"We're 100 percent sure it is a lunar meteorite, so that is good news," Arnold said Friday.
More tests will be done to determine exactly what kind of moon meteorite it is, Arnold said. The meteorite apparently has more nickel than usual.
"It will end up going through a battery of tests over the next month or so," Arnold said.
The Nomenclature Committee of The Meteoritical Society will give the meteorite a name, probably within six weeks, Arnold said. It will be named in part after the region, northwest Africa, where it was found, he said.
Arnold plans to carve small pieces of the lunar meteorite off and give them as "rewards" for people who donated $25 or more to the fundraising campaign. For donations of $7, the donor will get some moon dust created when the bits of the meteorite are cut away.
Donors are getting parts of a moon meteorite for about half the price they would have had to pay at his shop, he said.
Twenty percent of the lunar meteorite will be given to a research institution.
Whatever part is left after rewards and research will be used to make shadow-box displays, Arnold said. Those will be sold wholesale to museums and retail through his shop or eBay.
The first lunar meteorite was found in Antarctica in 1982, he said. Then, in the late 1990s, nomads in 0Africa began finding meteorites in the desert. So far, about 10,000 meteorites have been found in northwest Africa, Arnold said. About 50 of those were lunar meteorites.
No lunar meteorites have been found in the United States, Arnold said.
"Thousands of nomads are actively walking around treasure hunting for space rocks now," Arnold said in a video clip on his Kickstarter campaign.
"For the researchers, it's been an incredible boon because the six Apollo missions that brought back rocks brought rocks from only six spots on the moon," Arnold said. "Well, now we have rocks from 104 more spots on the moon."
The surface of the moon is pockmarked with craters from asteroid strikes, Arnold said.
"The moon doesn't have an atmosphere to slow asteroids down," he said. "It doesn't take that big of a rock to hit the moon and cause a crater and eject stuff back out into space. ... You look up at the moon, and there are a lot of craters. All that went somewhere. ... Who knows, there's probably some moon rock on Mars."
Arnold said the lunar meteorite was his first Kickstarter campaign.
"It's worth it," he said. "I am very happy we hit this. It means I will have the funds to make the purchase. Has it proven the concept to repeat it, I don't know yet."
NW News on 09/01/2014