Mineralogical investigation of ordinary chondrites

陨石对我们理解太阳系的形成至关重要，因为大多数陨石形成于大约45亿年前，就在我们太阳系形成的时候。 最大的陨石群被称为普通陨石。其中一个子集被称为L 6陨石，并被指定为“高度冲击”，这意味着它们所起源的母体受到巨大压力的打击，导致这些陨石中的矿物质发展出冲击脉等特征。更令人感兴趣的是，这种巨大的压力很可能与地球深处的压力相似，因此人们可以研究L 6陨石中的矿物质，以了解更多关于地球内部发生的事情。 陨石样本也非常重要，因为它们被用来设计许多用于太空任务的仪器，如火星漫游者。隼鸟号航天器将在2010年从小行星25143 Itokawa采集样本后返回地球，2016年，黎明号使命将在环绕谷神星1号和灶神星4号轨道运行后返回。美国航天局和世界各地的空间机构对小行星材料的兴趣越来越大;了解陨石中的矿物是制定飞行任务和解释所收集的光谱图像的关键。 本研究的目的是对高冲击普通陨石进行系统，全面的矿物学研究，这是陨石的主要群体，特别是50多颗L 6陨石中的冲击脉，以进一步了解太阳系的起源。具体来说，这两个目标是调查这些L 6陨石的矿物组成，以帮助了解它们起源的母体;并可能为我们理解早期太阳系的形成提供帮助。

Meteorites are crucial to our understanding of the formation of the Solar System because most formed about 4.5 billion years ago, right around when our Solar System was created. The largest group of meteorites is called ordinary chondrites. A subset of these are called L6 meteorites and are designated "highly shocked", meaning that the parent body on which they originated was hit by tremendous pressure, causing the minerals in these meteorites to develop features such as shock veins. Of further interest is that this tremendous pressure is very likely similar to that deep inside our Earth, so one can study the minerals within the L6 meteorites to learn more about what is happening in our Earth's interior. Meteorite samples are also very important because they are used to design many of the instruments used on space missions, such as the Mars rovers. The Hayabusa spacecraft will return to Earth in 2010 after having acquired samples from asteroid 25143 Itokawa and in 2016, the Dawn mission will return, after orbiting 1 Ceres and 4 Vesta. There is an increased interest in asteroid materials by both NASA and space agencies worldwide; understanding the minerals in meteorites is key to both the development of missions and the interpretation of spectral imaging collected. The objective of this study is to perform a systematic, comprehensive mineralogical study of highly shocked ordinary chondrites, the major group of meteorites, specifically the shock veins in over 50 L6 meteorites, to further our understanding of the origins of the Solar System. Specifically, the twin goals are to investigate the mineralogical make-up of these L6 meteorites in order to help understand the parent body on which they originated; and to potentially shed light in our understanding of the formation of the early Solar System.