Insights from fallen space rocks.
Our researchers are world-leading in analysis of meteorites, including from Mars, the Moon, Vesta, and fragments of asteroids and other parent bodies in the solar system. These space rocks help us unravel the history of the solar system and planetary bodies within it. Characterisation of meteorites recovered by the Desert Fireball Network allow findings to be linked to solar system by calculating their orbits.
Enabled by the state-of-the-art instrumentation and facilities of the John de Laeter Centre, we can apply wide-ranging techniques to our characterisation of space rocks, including SEM (high magnification imaging), EDS (semi-quantitative chemical analysis), EBSD (mineral phase and crystallographic analysis), TOF-SIMS (enhanced semi-quantitative chemical analysis), TEM (nano-scale imaging), Atom Probe tomography (nano-scale compositional analysis) and 40Ar/39Ar (age dating) techniques on single grain particles smaller than 100 micrometers.
Researchers in this theme include Dr Lucy Forman, Prof Gretchen Benedix, Prof Phil Bland, Prof Fred Jourdan, and A/Prof Nick Timms.