NASA Renews Search For Antarctic Meteorites To Unearth Early Solar System History

What is the stuff that makes up the solar system? This is a question that occupies the minds of most scientists who have anything to do with astronomy and its allied areas. Now, to learn more about it, and details about Earth’s neighbours, moon and Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and two other federal entities in the United States of America (US) have reaffirmed their commitment to search for Antarctic meteorites.

NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Smithsonian Institution (SI) recently renewed their agreement to search for, collect and curate Antarctic meteorites in a partnership known as ANSMET - the Antarctic Search for Meteorites Program.

This agreement replaces an earlier agreement from 1980 and advances the programme by a decade.

Smithsonian meteorite scientist Tim McCoy said,

Since the US began searching for meteorites in Antarctica in 1976, the ANSMET programme has collected more than 23,000 specimens, dramatically increasing the number of samples available for study from Earth's moon, Mars and asteroids.

Among them are the first meteorites discovered to come from the moon and Mars, and the well-known ALH 84001 Martian meteorite, which helped renew interest in Mars exploration in the 1990s.

Meteorites are natural objects that fall to Earth from space and survive intact so they can be collected on the ground, or - in this case - on ice.

Antarctica provides a unique environment for the collection of meteorites because the cold desert climate preserves meteorites for long periods of time, said NASA.

With inputs from IANS