Mineralogical investigation of ordinary chondrites

陨石对我们理解太阳系的形成是至关重要的，因为大多数陨石形成于大约45亿年前，大约在我们的太阳系形成的时候。 最大的陨石群被称为普通球粒陨石。这些陨石中的一个子集被称为L6陨石，并被指定为“高度震惊”，这意味着它们起源的母体受到巨大压力的撞击，导致这些陨石中的矿物形成了激波纹路等特征。更有趣的是，这种巨大的压力很可能与我们地球深处的压力相似，所以人们可以研究L6陨石中的矿物，以了解更多关于我们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，例如火星漫游车。Hayabusa航天器将在从小行星25143 Itokawa获取样本后于2010年返回地球，黎明号任务将在2016年绕1谷神星和4灶神星轨道运行后返回地球。美国国家航空航天局和世界各地的空间机构对小行星材料越来越感兴趣；了解陨石中的矿物是开展飞行任务和解释收集的光谱成像的关键。 本研究的目的是对主要陨石类高震级普通球粒陨石进行系统、全面的矿物学研究，特别是对50多块L6陨石中的激波脉进行研究，以加深对太阳系起源的认识。具体地说，这两个目标是研究这些L6陨石的矿物学组成，以帮助了解它们起源的母体；并潜在地阐明我们对早期太阳系形成的理解。

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.