Believe it or not, you can get your hands on a piece of the moon. That is, if you have access to millions of dollars.
Auction house Christie's has just set up a private sale of the fifth largest piece of the moon—"larger than any moon rock returned by the Apollo program," the press release notes—asking about $2.5 million for it.
The lunar meteorite, which weighs about 30 pounds (that would be 13.5 kilograms), is known as NWA 12691 and it was found in the Sahara Desert two years ago after falling to Earth in a meteor shower. Talk about cool.
Interestingly enough, the sale won't be an auction, which means that anyone with enough cash can go ahead and buy the rarity. How rare are we talking about? According to the press release, incredibly. "Moon rock is among the rarest substances on Earth, with less than 650 kilograms [1,433 pounds] of lunar meteorites known to exist," it reads.
The auction house also delves deep into the rock's origins, explaining it was part of a "large meteorite shower straddling the Western Saharan, Algerian and Mauritanian borders, responsible for nearly half of all known lunar meteorites." About 30 meteorites from that same shower were found in Northwest Africa and they "were collected, analyzed, classified."
If you're on a budget, you might want to consider another Christie's private sale. The auction house is also looking for buyers for a group of 13 aesthetic iron meteorites that were "shaped by forces terrestrial and extra-terrestrial." The price for the collection? About $1.7 million. Chump change, right?