Antarctica is a tough place to work as it is bitterly cold also remote and wild. However, it is the best place to hunt for meteorites as it is a desert and the dry climate limits the degree of weathering the meteorites experiences. But on the dry conditions the landscape is ideal for meteorite hunting. An international team of researchers have returned from Antarctica with five new meteorites including one that weighs 16.7 pounds.
Maria Valdes, a research scientist at the Fields Museum estimates there are about 45,000 meteorites retrieved from Antarctica and only hundred or so are this size or larger. The researchers along with four other scientists were the first to explore potential new meteorite mapped using satellite imagery by Veronica Tollennar, a thesis student in glaciology at Univeristy Libra de Bruxelles. As per the findings the reality on the ground is much more difficult than the beauty of satellite images. Valdes noted that some days during their trip it was actually colder in Chicago than it was in Antartica. The team rode on snowmobiles and trekking through ice fields made the Antarctica weather more extreme.
The meteorites recovered by the team will be analyzed at the Royal Belgian Institutes of Natural Sciences while the tiny micrometeorites was divided among the researchers for their study at their institutions. The team is eager to analyze the meteorites reveal as studying meteorites helps to understand our place in the universe. The bigger the samples the better there can be understanding of Solar System. The team was guided by Manu Poudelet of the International Polar Guide Association and assisted by Alain Hubert.