A Two-Way Street

BIMS members, (from left to right) Graham Ensor, Kieron Heard, Martin Goff and Matt Smith, visiting the PSSRI clean meteorite storage facility (Image: Martin Goff). It was a great pleasure earlier this month to welcome Matt Smith, Kieron Heard, Martin Goff and Graham Ensor of the British and Irish Meteorite Society (BIMS) to the Open…

Mission Control

Comet Hartley 2 imaged by the Deep Impact spacecraft on 4th November 2010. This highly active comet is the subject of a special session at this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. (Image: NASA) You might notice an increase in the number of space-related stories in the media over the next week or so. The…

Alien Asteroid (3) – The Sequel

Devastation caused by the explosion of a meteroid at low altitude in the Tunguska region of Siberia in 1908. (Imge: Wikipedia) Every Thursday lunchtime here at the Open University, a small band of enthusiasts meet up to discuss, well, just about anything really, but mainly meteorites. Of course, the group has a nice official title:…

Alien Asteroid (2) – Lost World

Muawia Shaddad (center right) and Peter Jenniskens (center left) point towards a fragment of the Almahata Sitta meteorite, in the company of several students from the University of Khartoum. (Image: Peter Jenniskens/SETI institute). Almahata Sitta arrived on Earth with a bang. It was the first recovered meteorite to be tracked in space (as Asteroid 2008…