This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Since 1976, under the auspices of an inter-agency agreement between NSF, NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) has recovered nearly 17,000 meteorite specimens from locations along the Transantarctic Mountains. This proposal requests support for continued recovery of Antarctic meteorites through systematic searches for meteorite specimens at previously discovered stranding surfaces. Minor reconnaissance efforts will also take place seeking to discover and explore the extent of new locations with potential meteorite concentrations. The meteorites recovered by ANSMET are the best and most reliable source of new, non-microscopic extraterrestrial material, providing essential "ground-truth" concerning the materials that make up the asteroids, planets, and other bodies of our solar system. ANSMET meteorites have helped researchers explore the conditions that were present in the nebula from which our solar system was born about 4.5 billion years ago, and provided samples of asteroids ranging from primitive bodies unchanged since the formation of the solar system to complex, geologically active miniature planets. ANSMET samples also proved, against the conventional wisdom, that some meteorites actually represent planetary material delivered to the Earth from the Moon and Mars, changing our view of the geology of those bodies. ANSMET meteorites have even generated a new kind of inquiry into one of the most fundamental scientific questions possible - the prevalence of biological activity in the universe as a whole. Continued reliance on students provides a broader impact to this proposed research and firmly grounds this effort in its educational mission.
