New Lunar mineral discovered and named in honor of Bruce Hapke

Dr. Bruce Hapke of the Department of Geology and Planetary Science predicted three decades ago that the vaporized iron and other minerals could condense as a glassy coating on lunar soils. This process of space weathering was used to explain the darkening of lunar soils with time. His theory was not widely accepted until now. Th evidence is inside a golf ball-size lunar meteorite. That meteorite contains a new mineral, a vapor-deposited combination of iron and silicon that geoscientist Lawrence Taylor of the University of Tennessee has named "hapkeite" with a chemical formula of Fe₂Si ...