Extraterrestrial Water Found Trapped in Meteorite

A meteorite that landed last year in a west Texas yard contains the first samples of extraterrestrial water.

August 27, 1999: On a clear day in west Texas, on March 22, 1998, a meteorite fell to Earth and was seen by a group of boys. They picked up the stone and it made its way to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) for analysis. In a JSC clean room two days later, the grey rock was opened with a hammer. Scientists found blue and purple halite inside. Halite is a salt crystal, similar to table salt. The crystals were up to 3 milimeters (less than a tenth of an inch) in diameter. These are the largest halite crystals ever seen by scientists in any extraterrestrial material. The presence of water inside the crystals was confirmed using several forms of scientific analysis.

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Above: An image of salt crystals found in the West Texas meteorite.

The crystals have turned blue and purple by radiation, and are estimated to be 4.5 billion years old. That means that the trapped water could predate the sun and planets in our Solar System.

According to the authors, a brine solution must have been present when the Solar System was formed. The brine could have been flowing within the asteroid itself when it was in space or it could have been deposited on the asteroid by a passing object, such as a comet.

Recent Headlines August 26: Studying the Mysteries of the Titanium Star August 25: NASA Announces Mars Landing Site August 24: If it Rains in the Pacific Will Kansas Have a Drought? August 19: Dashing and Coasting to the Interstellar Finish Line

The full story appears as an article entitled Asteroidal Water Within Fluid Inclusion-Bearing Halite in an H5 Chondrite, Monahans (1998) in the August 27, 1999 edition of Science Magazine. The authors are Michael E. Zolensky (JSC), Robert J. Bodnar (Department of Geological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA), Everett K. Gibson Jr. (JSC), Laurence E. Nyquist (JSC), Young Reese (Lockheed Martin Space Operations Company, Houston, TX), Chi-Yu Shih (Lockheed Martin Space Operations Company, Houston, TX), and Henry Wiesmann (Lockheed Martin Space Operations Company, Houston, TX)

To learn more about NASA's work in extraterrestrial materals, follow this link to the Astromaterials Samples home page at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. That organization's mission is to protect, preserve, and distribute for study samples from the Moon, Mars, and interplanetary space in support of solar system exploration.

The Frosty Plains of Europa -- Dec. 3, 1998. As Galileo returns new images of Europa, NASA scientists prepare to study samples from a potentially similar environment here on Earth.

Callisto makes a big splash -- Oct. 22, 1998. Scientists may have discovered a salty ocean and a possible ingredient for life on Jupiter's moon.

Galileo takes a close look at icy Europa -- Oct 2, 1998. The spacecraft flew within 2300 miles of the mysterious satellite last weekend.

Clues to possible life on Europa may lie buried in Antarctic ice -- Mar. 5, 1998. Exotic microbial forms turn up in ice above Antarctica's Lake Vostok.

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