University scientists studying donated meteorite fragments

Tanith L. Balaban Arizona Summer Wildcat Senior research specialist Dolores Hill (left) and research specialist James Gleason examine the scattered electron images from a meteorite that fell in New Mexico June 13. The meteorite's thermal history is unusual, and its composition was being examined to determine when and where it came from.

UA scientists have their hands on pieces of a meteorite that exploded over Portales, N.M., in June, after a UA student donated the rock.

The actual piece of the meteorite that University of Arizona scientist David Kring is studying was donated by Michael G. Farmer, a senior in Latin American studies and Spanish, who has been collecting meteorites for the last two years.

"It's my school, I wanted them to get a sample," Farmer said. "There's a lot of competition among universities for these things."

The UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab is one of three groups of research teams studying samples of the 143-pound Portales Valley meteorite supplied by private meteorite collectors and local residents.

"It's important because it is a fall event," said Kring. "That means the pieces get into the laboratory before they get contaminated."

The longer the meteorites are exposed to the Earth's atmosphere and forces, the more they are changed, Kring said.

"If they're picked up right away, we can determine how long they stayed out in space," said Dolores Hill, a research specialist at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Lab.

Kring said the meteorite was also fortuitous for scientists because of where it fell.

"It landed literally in people's backyards," he said. "One woman heard the booms, stepped out in her yard and found a 37-pound piece in her driveway."

Kring said donations like Farmer's are invaluable because parts of the meteorite need to be kept so they can be studied by future scientists.

"You try to collect and curate things for the future, when better instruments can come along to study them differently," said James Gleason, a research specialist at the Lunar and Planetary Lab.

Kring said he had recently studied a curated sample of a meteorite that fell to Earth in 1815.

Thirty-eight pieces of the Portales meteorite have been recovered. The meteorite was officially recognized and named by the Meteorite Nomenclature Committee two weeks ago in Ireland.

The UA's Meteorite Recovery Team has not been so lucky with another meteorite that fell near Casa Grande six days earlier than the New Mexico one.

Joseph Montani, a researcher at the Lunar Lab with the Space Watch Project, witnessed the Casa Grande fireball and attempted to map its location using the stars for a reference.

Researchers from the UA Meteorite Recovery Team combed a 100-square-mile patch of desert in search of the meteorite.

"They haven't hit pay dirt yet," Montani said, "but I'm pretty confident that with enough searching, someone will get lucky."

"I guarantee there are pieces on the ground," Farmer said. "It's just going to be lot harder to find them then it was in Portales."