Monday, January 26, asteroid 2004 BL86 flew past Earth at the short distance of 1.2 million kilometers (over 745,500 miles), at the closest point of its trajectory.  That's just over 3 times the distance from Earth to the Moon! 2004 BL86 measures approximately 0.5 km (1/3 of a mile) in size, and is the closest…

The Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University is pleased to announce the application opportunity for the 2014 Nininger Meteorite Award for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing research in meteoritical sciences. The Nininger Meteorite Award recognizes outstanding student achievement in the meteoritical sciences as embodied by an original research paper. The 2014 Nininger Meteorite…

Wishing you All the best in 2015! from the Center for Meteorite Studies Northwest Africa 7611 is a lunar meteorite found near the Moroccan/Algerian border in May of 2012.  The total known weight of the original specimen was 916 grams, and this 311-gram piece, donated to the Center by collector Jay Piatek, is the largest…

Experiments with the high pressure wind tunnel at Arizona State University’s Planetary Aeolian Laboratory provide key data for understanding dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is one of the few solar system bodies — and the only planetary moon — known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. (The others…

A recent article published in Science features the Martian meteorite NWA 7034 (aka Black Beauty), and details its discovery and distribution among collections. This meteorite is a polymict breccia containing a diverse assemblage of igneous and “sedimentary” materials. It was most likely produced by impact, but also involved volcanic and low-temperature alteration processes. The bulk…