ITWire

Tranquillityite [Fe²⁺₈(ZrY)₂Ti₃Si₃O₂₄] was named after Tranquility Base, the site of the first Moon landing by the NASA Apollo 11 lunar lander Eagle at the Sea of Tranquility.

Australian paleontologist Birger Rasmussen (Curtin University in Perth, Australia) and colleagues have discovered natural samples in six sites in Western Australia.

Rasmussen's finds were described in the January 2012 paper 'Tranquillityite: The last lunar mineral comes down to Earth' (doi:10.1130/G32525.1), which appears in the January 2012 issue within the journal Geology (and was first published in November 23, 2011).

The authors of the paper are Rasmussen, along with Ian R. Fletcher, Courtney J. Gregory, Janet R. Muhling, and Alexandra A. Suvorova.

The authors state in their paper: 'We have now identified tranquillityite in six dolerite dikes and sills from Western Australia.'

Investigations of the mineral, ''¦ suggests that tranquillityite is a relatively widespread, albeit volumetrically minor, accessory mineral '¦.'

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