Friend of the Center and research scientist, Steve Jurewicz, created a meteorite display at the Cave Creek Museum in Cave Creek, AZ, using meteorites from the CMS collection. The museum's website is http://www.cavecreekmuseum.com/. The new display showcases Arizona meteorites including a touch-piece of Canyon Diablo (a part of the bolide that created Meteor Crater).

ASU’s online newspaper (http://www.asuwebdevil.com) focused on the Center’s hands-on meteorite display in an article covering the September 2008 SESE Astronomy Open House.

The Center for Meteorite Studies is pleased to announce that Mary Sue Bell, a graduate student at the University of Houston and a senior scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center, and Anat Shahar, a graduate student at UCLA are the dual recipients of the 2007 Nininger Meteorite Award!

The Center recently unveiled two new facilities to enhance its research and education and public outreach activities. The Meteorite Preparation Laboratory contains a wide variety of sample preparation and analysis equipment to facilitate the research conducted by Center scientists and the identification and classification of possible meteorite samples sent to the Center by the public. The Education and Public Outreach Classroom serves as a space for hosting teachers, students or other guests visiting the Center and for Center meetings and lectures.

Recent modeling by a scientist at Sandia National Laboratory suggests that the impactor responsible for the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia, Russia was smaller than previously thought. His findings have implications for the true destructive capabilities of Earth-impacting bodies. Details of his findings can be found here.

In the early hours of January 29, Earth will get a close (~344,000 miles) flyby by Near-Earth Asteroid 2007 TU24. 2007 TU24, discovered only in October 2007, will not affect Earth but it will provide observers with moderately-sized telescopes a great view. Sky location and viewing information can be found here.

The Center for Meteorite Studies is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2006 Nininger Meteorite Award is Nicolas Ouellette, a graduate student working with Steven Desch and Jeff Hester at Arizona State University.

Assistant Director Michelle Minitti received a unique honor in November 2007 when the asteroid formerly known as 1985 CB2 was renamed 4202 Minitti in her honor. 4202 Minitti, which was discovered definitively on February 12, 1985 at the European Southern Observatory, resides in the main asteroid belt and is estimated to be 15-40 km in diameter. The citation accompanying the official designation recognizes Michelle's work on Martian mineralogy.

CMS Founding Director Carleton Moore is among a handful of scientists featured in the ASU Archives exhibit "ASU Science Pioneers 1955-1970". The exhibit also features Harvey H. Nininger, the meteorite scientist and hunter from whom ASU purchased the foundation of its meteorite collection. The Archives recently began curating Nininger's papers. In conjunction with the exhibit, the Archives created a video podcast discussing these science pioneers.

Visitors to the Center for Meteorite Studies museum can now enjoy the new exhibit "Graphite Nodules from the Canyon Diablo Meteorite", which focuses on these unique components of the meteorite that formed Meteor Crater in Arizona. This new exhibit reflects the Center's commitment to consistently providing new content to museum visitors.