[meteorite-list] Looking After and Preserving NASA's Extraterrestrial Samples

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:52:33 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201106192352.p5JNqX3F007804_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/CosmoSparks/June11/NASAsamples.html
    
Looking After and Preserving NASA's Extraterrestrial Samples
Written by Linda M. V. Martel, Hawai'i0 Institute of Geophysics and
Planetology, for PSRD

Planetary Science Research Discoveries
Cosmos Sparks

Materials from space have a superb home on Earth at the Johnson Space
Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. The curators and staff in the
Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at JSC have the enormous
and enviable responsibility for protecting, preserving, and distributing
extraterrestrial samples. You might be surprised at the variety of
materials and where they've come from: Comet particles; cosmic dust;
meteorites from asteroids, the Moon, and Mars; rocks and soils from the
Moon; and samples of the solar wind.

To find out more, take a look at the wonderful, comprehensive review by
Carlton Allen (Astromaterials Curator), Judith Allton (Genesis Sample
Curator), Gary Lofgren (Lunar Sample Curator), Kevin Righter (Antarctic
Meteorite Curator), and Michael Zolensky (Cosmic Dust and Stardust
Sample Curator) published recently in Chemie der Erde, the
international journal for geochemistry-related topics. The curators
cover, in detail, the six collections of extraterrestrial samples in
their care:

    * Lunar rocks and soils collected by the Apollo astronauts
    * Meteorites collected on NSF-funded expeditions to Antarctica;
      these are samples from asteroids, the Moon, and Mars
    * Cosmic dust collected by high altitude NASA aircraft
    * Solar wind atoms collected by the Genesis spacecraft
    * Comet particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft
    * Interstellar dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft

The report provides details of how the samples are collected, cataloged,
and stored, as well as how the laboratories and clean rooms operate.
Samples are allocated under strict guidelines to qualified researchers
and investigators worldwide. Upcoming acquisitions include samples from
asteroid Itokawa collected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's
Hayabusa spacecraft and returned to Earth in June 2010. In 2016, NASA
plans to launch the OSIRIS-REx mission that will collect at least 60
grams of a near-Earth asteroid for return to Earth in 2023. The curators
are also looking farther into the future, when conceivable sample-return
missions may include atmospheric gases, ices or other
temperature-sensitive minerals, and organic compounds in addition to
rock, soil, and dust samples. Big advances in analysis techniques and
instrumentation, and new generations of scientists, are making new
discoveries in the extraterrestrial samples, even using the lunar rocks
returned by Apollo some 40 years ago to help prove the Moon is not bone
dry. The curators acknowledge in their paper, "We stand on the shoulders
of giants--the far-sighted scientists who realized, during Apollo, the
importance of extraterrestrial samples to the advance of scientific
understanding, and who created the model for all future curation."

See:
Allen, C., Allton, J., Lofgren, G., Righter, K., and Zolensky, M. (2011)
Curating NASA's Extraterrestrial Samples--Past, Present, and Future
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009281911000031>.
/Chemie der Erde-Geochemistry,/ vol. 71(1), p. 1-20, doi:
10.1016/j.chemer.2010.12.003. Also see JSC Astromaterials Acquisition
and Curation Office <http://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/index.cfm> and *PSRD*
article Celebrated Moon Rocks <../../Dec09/Apollo-lunar-samples.html>.

Written by Linda M. V. Martel, Hawai???i Institute of Geophysics and
Planetology, for PSRD <../../index.html>.

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June 2011
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Received on Sun 19 Jun 2011 07:52:33 PM PDT