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Meteoritics is the study of meteorites — solid parts of asteroids or comets that have landed on another celestial body, notably (but not limited to) the Earth. Measuring the composition of meteorites provides vital information about the formation of astronomical bodies that are otherwise impossible to study.
A quasicrystalline mineral, made of aluminium, copper, iron and silicon, and with a crystallographically forbidden symmetry, formed by fast cooling, is identified and characterized in an extraterrestrial fragment from Italy.
Important biomolecules from the birth of our Solar System such as amino acids and polyaromatic hydrocarbons were analysed in the UK meteorite fall Winchcombe by synchrotron and electron microscopy techniques with unique high energy resolution.
This Article provides evidence for apatite in a ferroan anorthosite clast in a lunar meteorite, allowing direct measurement of the volatile systematics of the primary products of the lunar magma ocean and the earliest lunar crust.
Fe/Ni and Fe/Co ratios in iron meteorites indicate that the earliest inner Solar System planetesimals were oxidized and water-bearing, having formed beyond the point at which water condensed in the solar protoplanetary disk.
Iron nitride (Fe4N) is detected on magnetite particles within the Ryugu sample returned by Hayabusa2. It is probably the product of impacts of nitrogen-rich dust from the outer Solar System on the surface of Ryugu, indicative of a flux of N-rich dust in the inner Solar System.
Following on from insights gleaned from iron meteorites, Claire Nichols explains why tetrataenite, with its unique magnetic properties, could be key for future renewable energy technologies.
Seismometers on the NASA InSight lander have identified unusual signals from meteoroid impacts on Mars. Impact locations were confirmed by satellite images of new craters at these sites and directly constrain the martian interior, confirming its crustal structure and ground-truthing the scaling of impact-induced seismicity.
Samples returned from the carbonaceous (C-type) asteroid 162173 Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 mission were preliminarily analysed in a non-destructive manner. Their dark spectral features, small densities and absence of a high-temperature component imply that they are most similar to primitive CI group chondrites, but show some differences to known planetary materials.
The first robotically obtained samples of a carbonaceous asteroid have been safely returned to Earth. A non-destructive first-look analysis shows that asteroid Ryugu may be a CI chondrite with interesting variations.