Investigating the water and volatile inventory of unequilibrated ordinary chondrites

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Liquid water is one of the vital ingredients that allowed the emergence of life in the Solar System. Therefore, understanding the origin(s) of Solar System water is an active area of Solar System science research. Water is ubiquitous in the Solar System, and is present in most of the planets and their satellites, as well as asteroids and comets. The volatile-rich carbonaceous chondrite meteorites are thought to constitute some of the most primitive Solar System objects, and have thus been the focus of most of the studies on water in the early Solar System. On the other hand, the volatile inventory of ordinary chondrite meteorites has received much less attention, despite the fact that these meteorites, which represent the large majority of samples in our meteorite collections, probably sample asteroid-types that played an important role during formation of terrestrial planets. The goal of this project is to fill this important knowledge gap by constraining the volatile budget of unequilibrated ordinary chondrites.We will investigate the water and volatile inventory of around 15-20 unequilibrated ordinary chondrite meteorites using a combination of petrological, geochemical and spectroscopic techniques. The mineralogy of the samples will be examined using XRD analysis, infrared spectroscopy and electron beam techniques. The abundance and isotopic composition of water and other volatile species (e.g., N, S, and Cl) will be determined in selected samples using transmission infrared spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry. This original dataset obtained on water and volatiles in ordinary chondrite meteorites will eventually permit testing of our existing models for the origin and processing of water and volatiles in the early Solar System.