Requesting Antarctic Meteorite Samples for Research

The U.S. Antarctic meteorite program began in the 1970’s and has provided more than 24,000 samples. The program is based on a three agency agreement between NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution. The collection, stored at the Johnson Space Center and the Smithsonian, is one of the largest collections of meteorites in the world and features samples from the moon, Mars, asteroids, and material from the early solar system. A brief overview of the collection shows it contains 92.2% ordinary chondrites (7205 H, 9126 L, 3890 LL, 146 enstatite, 30 R chondrites, 3.2% (973) carbonaceous chondrites, 3.7% (560) achondrites (1.7% HED), 118 irons, 27 pallasites, 41 mesosiderites, as well as many puzzling, ungrouped meteorites. JSC has sent splits of over 20,000 meteorite samples to more than 500 scientists around the world since 1977.

After the meteorites are collected in Antarctica, they are shipped frozen to JSC in Houston, TX, arriving in April following the field season. The Astromaterials Curation Office at JSC is responsible for:
- providing supplies and tools for the field team.
- receiving the frozen meteorites.
- staging: repackaging and changing the samples’ field identification numbers with official names.
- submitting the names to the Nomenclature Committee of the Meteoritical Society for approval as new meteorites.
- providing storage and handling of the meteorites in a class 10,000 clean room.
- initial processing: weighing, measuring, describing, and photographing the sample and providing a chip for classification to the
Smithsonian Institution staff.
- the issuing of two newsletters per year, announcing hundreds of new meteorites.
- the handling of requests from the scientific community and the allocation of those requests that are approved.
- making petrographic thin and thick sections for the JSC library and scientific investigators.
- maintaining the meteorite database with more than 76,000 sample splits.