Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
accompany the field team back to McMurdo at the end of
the field season. While in McMurdo the storage containers
are kept closed whenever possible, and stored in a clean
-20° C freezer. In late February the specimens are trans-
ported by ship (still frozen) to Port Hueneme, California,
and upon arrival are forwarded by freezer truck to the
Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where they can
be thawed under controlled dry conditions to minimize
interaction with liquid water. Curatorial and characteriza-
tion activities associated with ANSMET-collected meteor-
ites are described in Chapter 3 (Righter et al., this volume).
Note that our sample protocols are designed to fully
document possible anthropogenic contamination of sam-
ples rather than totally eliminate such contact. Prior
studies conducted during ANSMET fieldwork have
shown that imposing dramatic “cleanroom-style” con-
straints on meteorite recovery does little to reduce such
contamination [
Fries et al.
, 2012]. In fact, the specimens
have typically been immersed in the Antarctic environ-
ment for thousands of years; terrestrial contamination is
completely unavoidable, and some part of that baseline is
already anthropogenic.
many thousands of folks of the McMurdo Station
community who have supported and sacrificed for sci-
ence in general and for ANSMET specifically.
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2.5. CONCLUSIONS: THE FUTURE OF
ANSMET METEORITE RECOVERIES
To date, ANSMET has conducted meteorite searches
on nearly 200 icefields at 75 different sites in the Trans-
antarctic Mountains and nearby regions (Figure 2.1).
These icefields have ranged in size from parts of a square
kilometer to several hundred square kilometers, and the
number of meteorites recovered from these icefields has
ranged from zero (in many cases) to several thousand
(in just a few). In spite of ANSMET's long history, many
icefields remain targets for both reconnaissance and
systematic searching, both within and outside the
Transantarctics. Given the large numbers of scientific
mysteries that remain in planetary materials research,
many of which can only be solved by new specimens, this
is a good thing for both science and the future of the
U.S. Antarctic meteorite program. ANSMET's field
methods will continue to evolve with technological and
logistical advances and as our understanding of mete-
orite concentrations improve; but we expect the base-
line procedures described here, having served us so well
for decades, will remain fundamental to those future
operations.
Acknowledgements.
The authors would also like to thank
the 170+ volunteers who have participated in ANSMET
as field party members. Bill Cassidy, the founder of
ANSMET, called the program the poor person's space
probe, making you the world's most underpaid astro-
nauts. We also want to express our sincere thanks to the
