Radar-Enabled Recovery of the Sutter’s Mill Meteorite, a Carbonaceous Chondrite Regolith Breccia
- Peter Jenniskens1,2,*,
- Marc D. Fries3,
- Qing-Zhu Yin4,
- Michael Zolensky5,
- Alexander N. Krot6,
- Scott A. Sandford2,
- Derek Sears2,
- Robert Beauford7,
- Denton S. Ebel8,
- Jon M. Friedrich8,9,
- Kazuhide Nagashima6,
- Josh Wimpenny4,
- Akane Yamakawa4,
- Kunihiko Nishiizumi10,
- Yasunori Hamajima11,
- Marc W. Caffee12,
- Kees C. Welten10,
- Matthias Laubenstein13,
- Andrew M. Davis14,15,
- Steven B. Simon14,
- Philipp R. Heck14,15,
- Edward D. Young16,
- Issaku E. Kohl17,
- Mark H. Thiemens18,
- Morgan H. Nunn18,
- Takashi Mikouchi19,
- Kenji Hagiya20,
- Kazumasa Ohsumi21,
- Thomas A. Cahill22,
- Jonathan A. Lawton22,
- David Barnes22,
- Andrew Steele23,
- Pierre Rochette24,
- Kenneth L. Verosub4,
- Jérôme Gattacceca24,
- George Cooper2,
- Daniel P. Glavin25,
- Aaron S. Burton25,26,
- Jason P. Dworkin25,
- Jamie E. Elsila25,
- Sandra Pizzarello27,
- Ryan Ogliore6,
- Phillipe Schmitt-Kopplin28,29,
- Mourad Harir28,
- Norbert Hertkorn28,
- Alexander Verchovsky30,
- Monica Grady30,
- Keisuke Nagao31,
- Ryuji Okazaki32,
- Hiroyuki Takechi32,
- Takahiro Hiroi33,
- Ken Smith34,
- Elizabeth A. Silber35,
- Peter G. Brown35,
- Jim Albers1,
- Doug Klotz36,
- Mike Hankey37,
- Robert Matson38,
- Jeffrey A. Fries39,
- Richard J. Walker40,
- Igor Puchtel40,
- Cin-Ty A. Lee41,
- Monica E. Erdman41,
- Gary R. Eppich42,
- Sarah Roeske4,
- Zelimir Gabelica43,
- Michael Lerche44,
- Michel Nuevo1,2,
- Beverly Girten2,
- Simon P. Worden2,
- (the Sutter’s Mill Meteorite Consortium)
- 1SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
- 2NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
- 3Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ 85719–2395, USA.
- 4Department of Geology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
- 5Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX 77058, USA.
- 6Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and Astrobiology Institute, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
- 7Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, University of Arkansas, AR 72701, USA.
- 8Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA.
- 9Department of Chemistry, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458, USA.
- 10Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–7450, USA.
- 11Low Level Radioactivity Laboratory, Kanazawa University, Nomi, Ishikawa 923-1224, Japan.
- 12Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
- 13Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, I-67100 Assergi, Italy.
- 14Department of the Geophysical Sciences, Enrico Fermi Institute and Chicago Center for Cosmochemistry, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
- 15Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605, USA.
- 16Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1567, USA.
- 17Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
- 18Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
- 19Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
- 20Graduate School of Life Science, University Hyogo, Hyogo 678-1297, Japan.
- 21Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, Sayo-cho, Hyogo 679-5189, Japan.
- 22Department of Physics, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
- 23Geophysics Laboratory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC 20015, USA.
- 24Centre Européen de Recherche et d’Enseignement, CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université, F-13545 Aix-en-Provence, France.
- 25NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
- 26Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
- 27Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
- 28Helmholtz Zentrum München, D-85764 München, Germany.
- 29Analytische Lebensmittel Chemie, Technische Universität München, Freising, Germany.
- 30Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
- 31Geochemical Research Center, University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
- 32Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kyushu University, Hakozaki, Fukuoka 812-8581, Japan.
- 33Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA.
- 34Nevada Seismological Laboratory, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.
- 35University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 3K7, Canada.
- 36Space Science for Schools, Incline Village, NV 89451, USA.
- 37American Meteor Society, Geneseo, NY 14454, USA.
- 38Science Applications International Corporation, Seal Beach, CA 90740, USA.
- 39U.S. Air Force Weather Agency, 1st Weather Group, Offutt Air Force Base, NE 68113, USA.
- 40Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
- 41Department of Earth Science, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
- 42Glenn Seaborg Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.
- 43Université de Haute Alsace, F-68093 Mulhouse, France.
- 44McClellan Nuclear Research Center, University of California at Davis, McClellan, CA 95652, USA.
- ↵*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: petrus.m.jenniskens{at}nasa.gov
Abstract
Doppler weather radar imaging enabled the rapid recovery of the Sutter’s Mill meteorite after a rare 4-kiloton of TNT–equivalent asteroid impact over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. The recovered meteorites survived a record high-speed entry of 28.6 kilometers per second from an orbit close to that of Jupiter-family comets (Tisserand’s parameter = 2.8 ± 0.3). Sutter’s Mill is a regolith breccia composed of CM (Mighei)–type carbonaceous chondrite and highly reduced xenolithic materials. It exhibits considerable diversity of mineralogy, petrography, and isotope and organic chemistry, resulting from a complex formation history of the parent body surface. That diversity is quickly masked by alteration once in the terrestrial environment but will need to be considered when samples returned by missions to C-class asteroids are interpreted.
- Received for publication 9 July 2012.
- Accepted for publication 12 November 2012.
