[meteorite-list] Radar Used in Kansas Meteorite Find May One Day Prove Helpful on Mars

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Oct 20 12:38:53 2006
Message-ID: <200610201638.JAA21070_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.nysun.com/article/41728

Radar Used in Meteorite Find May One Day Prove Helpful on Mars
By ROXANA HEGEMAN
Associated Press
October 18, 2006

GREENSBURG, Kan. - Scientists were excited when they pulled a 154-pound
meteorite from deep below a Kansas wheat field, but what got them most
electrified was the way they unearthed it.

The team Monday uncovered the find 4 feet under a meteorite-strewn field
using new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used
on Mars. It was that technology that pinpointed the site and proved for
the first time that it could be used to find objects buried deep in the
ground and to make an accurate three-dimensional image of them.

"It validates the technique so we can use something similar to that
instrument when we go to Mars," the director of the Rice Space
Institute, Patricia Reiff, said.

Such GPR systems had been used in the past to locate smaller meteorites
in Antarctica where ice allows easier penetration of the sonar. But
until the Kansas dig, the technology had not been successfully used for
ground detection in heavy soils - like on Mars - to find meteorites or
water there.The dig was likely the most documented excavation yet of a
meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand
tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of
the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and
organic material preserved for dating purposes.

"When we find a piece of meteorite, each one is a new sentence we add to
the book to understand the evolution of the solar system," a planetary
scientist at the Johnson Space Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute in
Houston, Essam Heggy, said.

Even before they had the pallasite meteorite out of the ground, the
scientific specialists at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom
that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago.
Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer
to 10,000 years ago.

"We know it is recent," the director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum
of Natural Science, Carolyn Sumners, said, as she surveyed progress on
the dig."Native Americans could have seen it."

The expedition was put together by the Houston Museum of Natural Science
and led by meteorite hunters Steve Arnold and Philip Mani. Johnson Space
Center's Lunar and Planetary Institute, the Rice Space Institute at Rice
University and George Observatory in Houston also sent researchers.

Fewer than 1% of the meteorites discovered on earth are pallasite
meteorites, known for their crystals embedded in iron, Mr. Mani said.

Sophisticated metal detectors at the site initially detected what had
been thought to be the largest pallasite meteorite ever discovered. But
ground-penetrating radar showed that the object was only a steel cable.

The Brenham field was discovered in 1882. Scientists have since traced
pieces of the shower as far away as Indian mounds in Ohio, indicating
the meteorites were traded as pieces of jewelry and ceremonial artifacts.
Received on Fri 20 Oct 2006 12:38:46 PM PDT