The specimen is one of only about 100 that size or larger discovered in Antarctica, a prime meteorite-hunting location where more than 45,000 space rocks have been tracked down.
During an expedition to Antarctica that concluded Jan. 16, 2023, researchers found five meteorites, including one of the largest specimens recovered from the continent.
Valdes’ area of focus is cosmochemistry. That “broadly means that we use meteorites to study the origin and evolution of the solar system through chemical methods,” she told CNN. She’ll take her samples and use strong acids to dissolve them before using a process called calibrated chemistry to isolate various elements that make up the rock.
Hunting for meteoroids is “really low tech and less complicated than people might think,” Valdes said. “We’re either walking around or driving on a snowmobile, looking on the surface.”used satellite data to help narrow down locations where meteorites were most likely to be found. “A lot of rocks can seem like they’re meteorites, but they’re not,” she said. “We call these meteor-wrongs.”
When it comes to future research, the good news, Valdes added, is that the five meteorites she and her colleagues discovered on this expedition are just the tip of the iceberg.
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