This book deals with the systematic collection of meteorites from Antarctica by the National Science Foundation, and their curation and analysis, which has resulted in the birth and development of planetary material science. The book consists of ten chapters: History, Fieldwork, Curation, Chondrites, Achondrites, Lunar meteorites, Martian meteorites, Unique meteorites, Cosmogenic nuclides, and Statistics.
The first three chapters are the important ones for Antarctic scientists. In Chapter 1, the book starts with the story of the first joint expedition of the US and Japan, and then deals with the establishment of the ANSMET (US Antarctic Search for Meteorites) programme. The experiences of the author (Ursula Marvin) on these expeditions are very interesting, as they include accounts of work in the field, the excitement of finding the lunar meteorite and so on. Chapter 2 describes the annual meteorite searches by the US from 1976 to 2010, missing only 1990. The search area has significantly extended to cover all of the ice fields around the Transantarctic Mountains; the work was led by the endeavours of Ralph Harvey, who managed and guided the field team almost every year! The number of meteorites collected is now over 20 000. Since the field locations of meteorites have been recorded using GPS, the field maps not only show meteorite distribution on the ice fields but also allow us to see how the ice movement results in the concentration of meteorites at particular localities.
In Chapter 3, Kevin Righter describes the curation of the collected Antarctic meteorites, the active and careful handling of collected meteorites under clean conditions at Johnson Space Center for world wide usage of the meteorites, and the classification and secure storage at the Smithsonian Institution.
The book has many fantastic colour photographs of ice fields, field scenes and meteorites which will undoubtedly stimulate future interest and help in demonstrating the importance of Antarctic meteorites for planetary science. Perhaps for many it will illustrate for the first time just how widely Antarctic meteorites vary. After Chapter 3, on 112 unnumbered pages, there are 80 representative meteorite samples illustrated and described with reference to specific research papers for each meteorite. The Allan Hills 84001 Martian meteorite is included, which people may remember had a fossil-like texture which, in 1995, suggested that there might have been life on Mars. The remaining chapters are clearly very useful for meteoriticists, but could also be attractive for other Antarctic scientists since they include many photographs and graphs.
The book suggests that the flux and concentration of meteorites may be strongly related to climate change and the geologic history of the Earth. Finally, the book is highly relevant to the recent space missions to collect samples from asteroids (Hayabusa, Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx). I recommend this book as an interesting and valuable resource not only to planetary scientists and geologists but also for other Antarctic scientists interested in this unique feature of Antarctica.
