Buseck Center for Meteorite Studies

On October 13, 2014, something very strange happened to the camera aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), which normally produces beautifully clear images of the lunar surface, produced an image that was wild and jittery.  From the sudden and jagged pattern apparent in the image, the LROC team determined…

Center Director Meenakshi Wadhwa recently spoke at the annual TEDxASU event, focusing on Innovation: The act of taking a new outlook on an old problem.   The event featured innovators focused on changing the way that the world looks at education, research, and entrepreneurship, and meaningfully impacting the ASU community as well as the world in…

The recipients of the prestigious 2017 NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) have been announced, and include the Center's own Daniel Dunlap! Daniel's research involves the use of high-resolution chronometers based on short-lived radionuclides (Specifically, 26Al-26Mg and 53Mn-53Cr) to investigate the timing of melting and differentiation of planetesimals in the early Solar System.  These…

Center Meteorite Curator Laurence Garvie is first author on a new paper published in the journal Icarus. According to Dr. Garvie, the paper (Sedimentary laminations in the Isheyevo (CH/CBb) carbonaceous chondrite formed by gentle impact-plume sweep-up) required a true interdisciplinary effort, with contributions from meteoriticists, astrophysics, and sedimentologists. "I am often asked “what is your…

Katol is an (L6) ordinary chondrite that fell over the town of Katol, in the Nagpur District of India, the afternoon of May 22, 2012. The Meteoritical Bulletin (MB 102) describes the fall of the Katol meteorite as a large shower of stones followed by 30 to 50 seconds of sonic booms.  At least 30…