Magnetic Properties of Lunar Samples

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Abstract
A breccia sample (10023) from the moon was found to have a strong and fairly stable remanent magnetization. If this sample was not magnetized by local fields in the spacecraft or in the lunar receiving laboratory, it must have been magnetized on the moon. This could have happened in a variety of ways, such as cooling through the Curie temperature, by continuous thermal cycling, or by impact, but all of these require the presence of a magnetic field. Such a field could have been of internal origin in the moon, or it could have been a residual effect from the earth's magnetic field at a time when the moon and the earth were much closer together. Thermomagnetic studies identify the presence of iron with about 1 percent nickel (igneous), iron with about 5 to 10 percent nickel (meteoritic), iron with about 33 percent or more nickel (meteoritic), and ilmenite.