<img alt=“tektite1.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/tektite1.jpg” width=“340” height=“363” align=right border=0 hspace=10/>

Tektites are glass-like rocks first found scattered around the Earth.

“Prior to the receipt of the lunar samples, it was the scientific consensus that tektites were melted and splashed material formed during large cometary or meteorite impact events. Whether the impact took place on the Earth or the Moon was the topic of a long-standing scientific debate, which raged with particular intensity during the decade previous to the lunar landings.”

-from “Tektites: A post-Apollo view,” by Stuart Ross-Taylor in Earth Science Reviews, Volume 9, Issue 2, p. 101-123.

On 6 July 1969 Dean R. Chapman [pdf], a physicist at NASA Ames Research Center, explained the lunar origin to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, and suggested that the rocks brought back by Apollo 11 would not be the first lunar samples studied by scientists.

Photo: Typical tektites. NASA

<img alt=“tektite1.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/tektite1.jpg” width=“340” height=“363” align=right border=0 hspace=10/>

Tektites are glass-like rocks first found scattered around the Earth.

“Prior to the receipt of the lunar samples, it was the scientific consensus that tektites were melted and splashed material formed during large cometary or meteorite impact events. Whether the impact took place on the Earth or the Moon was the topic of a long-standing scientific debate, which raged with particular intensity during the decade previous to the lunar landings.”

-from “Tektites: A post-Apollo view,” by Stuart Ross-Taylor in Earth Science Reviews, Volume 9, Issue 2, p. 101-123.

On 6 July 1969 Dean R. Chapman [pdf], a physicist at NASA Ames Research Center, explained the lunar origin to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, and suggested that the rocks brought back by Apollo 11 would not be the first lunar samples studied by scientists.

Photo: Typical tektites. NASA