hot potato

Abstract

This chapter refers to Roberta Score, the curator of the Antarctic Meteorite Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, who was hunting for meteorites in Antarctica during the last days of 1984. It discusses the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program, which excavated pristine meteorites collected on the blue ice of Antarctica that had fallen thousands or millions of years ago. It also describes the meteorites as a scientific windfall for the scientific community and worth the difficult work involved in obtaining them. The chapter focuses on the meteorite that was discovered by Score and was named ALH 84001. It points out that the greenish color of ALH 84001 was so unusual that it became a high-priority meteorite when it arrived in Houston.