Astromaterials News
Francis McCubbin, Astromaterials Curator
Volume 4 No. 2 • September 2022
About the Astromaterials Newsletter:
Welcome to the eighth issue of the Astromaterials Newsletter! The Astromaterials Newsletter is a bi-annual publication produced by the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA Johnson Space Center to inform the sample science community about updates to our policies, collections, and available samples. In particular, the Astromaterials Newsletter will be our exclusive mechanism for announcing new samples or new sample opportunities available to the community across all of our collections, and we publish the Astromaterials Newsletter on the same cadence as the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter.
The primary aim of the Astromaterials Newsletter is to maximize the science returns from our existing collections through better communication and advertisement of sample availability to the scientific community. A big part of that improved communication is to provide updates to the sample analysis community about what is going on in our labs and at JSC that could impact the collections or the timing of sample allocations. Most importantly, the Astromaterials Newsletter was established to provide a fair and transparent process by which the community receives information about available samples across all our collections. As always, details about all of NASA’s Astromaterials samples that are available for request can be found within each respective collection’s sample catalog, which are available on our website (https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/). Any new samples announced in this issue will also appear within the appropriate sample catalog on our website.
Impacts on Curation from COVID-19 Pandemic
The Johnson Space Center has returned to nominal operations and is no longer operating in a reduced capacity due the COVID-19 pandemic. We have worked through the backlog of allocations that had occurred as a result of our reduced on-site presence, and we thank you all for your patience and understanding as we worked through that backlog. Unless something changes, this will be the last time we have a regular updated on the impacts of COVID-19 to curation operations.Astromaterials Data Archiving Announcement from the Astromaterials Data Repository
Investigators who produce geochemical data from meteorites or other astromaterials samples are encouraged to utilize the Astromaterials Data Repository (AstroRepo) to openly share their data in compliance with Open Data policies of funding agencies and publishers. AstroRepo is a trusted repository service for researchers to publish and archive astromaterials sample data. Dataset files can be easily submitted via a web interface, and can be kept under moratorium for up to two years. AstroRepo links the datasets to related publications and NASA award numbers.
AstroRepo is part of the Astromaterials Data System, a data infrastructure that stores, curates, and provides access to laboratory data acquired on samples curated in the Astromaterials Collections of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Please feel free to contact AstroRepo at info@astromat.org with any questions. Astromat data curators are available to help you with publishing your data and advise how you can 'rescue' personal or institutional legacy data sets that are in danger of being lost and ensure their long-term impact on scientific advances, making them accessible in a sustainable manner.
Broad Updates for the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office
In December, 2021 NASA Received 10% of the samples that JAXA returned from the asteroid Ryugu, and in this issue, we are announcing the availability of those samples to the scientific community in the newly established Hayabusa2 News section of this newsletter. Please see the details outlined in that section for additional information on the sample catalog and the material that is currently available for request from NASA.
In February, 2022 we extracted gas from both the outer vacuum container (OVC) and the inner core sample vacuum container (CSVC) of Apollo sample 73001 as part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program. The 73001 gas has undergone preliminary examination by the ANGSA Science Team, which has confirmed an extraterrestrial component in the gas. Details of the available gas sample are provided in the Apollo News section of this newsletter. In particular, we are making the gas samples available for request as part of this call. For those sample requests that are successful, the requester and their team will become participating scientists on the gas analysis portion of ANGSA, which is being led by Dr. Rita Parai. Please see the Apollo News section of this newsletter for full details!
A subset of Cosmic Dust samples collected during a timed flight that coincided with the Geminid meteor shower are announced in this issue of the Astromaterials Newsletter. Please see the Cosmic Dust News section of the newsletter for full details.
The Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter has announced an additional 147 Antarctic meteorites available for request from the Dominion Range (DOM) 2018 and Grosvenor Mountains (GRO) 2017 ANSMET seasons. Please see the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter for all the details.
Thank you for reading the Astromaterials News section of the Astromaterials Newsletter, and I wish you and your families a safe and healthy remainder of 2022 and a wonderful start to 2023.