Collecting Bits of Outer Space for NASA
Rutgers planetary geologist searches for meteorites in the most desolate corners of Antarctica
In addition to sending people into space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in conjunction with Case Western Reserve University, sends volunteers, like Rutgers scholar Juliane Gross, to collect the little bits of outer space that land on Earth – meteorites.
Meteorites can yield important information about the larger bodies of rock they came from and planet-altering processes that have shaped our corner of the universe, including the origins of our own home planet Earth. For scientific research purposes, these space rocks are most useful when they have been untouched by weather, erosion, human hands or other terrestrial and biological agents. And the best place on Earth to find pristine meteorites is Antarctica.
Gross, a planetary geologist, just spent two and a half months as one of those volunteers, collecting meteorites at a campsite several thousand feet above sea level, where the nearest living organism was at least 200 miles away. She was a member of a NASA-funded expedition to find space rocks as part of the Case Western Reserve University’s Antarctic Search for Meteorites program.
Gross describes her ten weeks in a place where even microbes won’t survive, with the temperature cold enough to freeze hot water into icy mist, as a perilous adventure.
“Antarctica is trying to kill you every second you are out there,” Gross said. “But the beauty there makes up for it and it really teaches you to appreciate life – the little things, like running water. Like fresh vegetables, which I’m obsessed with now.”
After several flights in progressively smaller planes, Gross and her three colleagues, including a mountaineer, arrived at their site on the ice plateau. They had two sleeping tents and a bathroom tent. No showers, no running water, not much heat.
Although there was plenty to eat, there was a point early on in which Gross was in danger of losing too much weight. “In such extreme cold, you need to eat a lot of calories just to produce enough heat to stay alive,” she said. “Despite all I ate, I kept losing weight. I was getting really cold. Our mountaineer looked at me and said, ‘All right, you need to eat lots of pure butter.’ So I did and things got so much better!”
The landscape was starkly beautiful: blue sky, white snow and ice, black rocks. Sometimes, howling windstorms turned everything white for days at a time. On those days, it was impossible to do anything but stay in a tent.
In the end the food, the cold, the small tents, the storms, didn't matter and Gross and her team collected 263 meteorites, some of which may have come from Mars and some from the outer reaches of the solar system. For Gross, who is working with colleague Sonia Tikoo and students to grow Rutgers’ interplanetary research, this is an important way to push forward human knowledge about our own origins.
She has already signed up to go back.