An Article In Meteorite-Times Magazine
by Stuart Atkinson

A 22nd CENTURY METEORITE MARATHON

 Today, given enough vacation-time, and money, a serious meteorite collector could spend a very enjoyable couple of months flitting around the world on a specimen-collecting marathon, spending several days - or even weeks - at a time trawling the best-known strewn-fields for new treasures. The orange-painted Australian Outback, the dusty desserts of Chile and Africa, the rolling dry lake beds of the US and the snowy wilderness's of Siberia would all be on a Marathoner's travel itinerary - and of course the Grand Tour of Earth's fall sites would *have* to end with a week in Antarctica, scouring the blue-ice plains for one of those elusive SNCs which parka-clad Beakers find with such depressing regularity... 

But one day in the future, all those fields will have been cleared. Metal detectors will wave back and forth over them in vain, and weary, gritty eyes will be lifted to the heavens in search of inspiration and help. What then? Where will we look for our beloved Star Stones? Well, there 's one - and really *only* one - answer.

 Out There.

 It stands to reason that if there are meteorites here on Earth, they're sitting on the surfaces of *other* planets and bodies elsewhere in the Solar System too, just waiting to be collected, brought back to Earth, catalogued, studied and sold. So, in a hundred years' time, where might an intrepid - and disgustingly-rich - interplanetary Rob Elliot or Bob Haag go in search of bounty..? 

Well, let's think... 

1. THE MOON 

The Moon is Earth's closest celestial neighbour - a ball of dusty grey rock, a quarter the size of our own world, and a quarter of a million miles away. Given enough money, and an available seat on a ship, a meteorite collector could be there in just a couple of days. And what would they find there? Well, being so close to the Earth, chances are that he or she would find pretty much the same types of meteorites found *on* Earth, all the "usual suspects". But, of course, there'd be many more of them. Without an atmosphere to ablate meteoritic material away, specimens would reach the surface with our any dramatic reduction in size (they'd also have no fusion crust, of course!) But that lack of atmosphere would have a downside too - meteorites would not be slowed-down as they approached the surface, and would impact at considerable speed. Rocky ones would shatter into dust if they fell on, or against, stony ground - and the Moon is littered with rocks and boulders, as you know.  

But going to the Moon would mean a chance of finding a special meteorite - a piece of Earth rock, blasted-out of our planet's crust in the dinosaur-culling KT Event impact. For just as we have found pieces of lunar rock here on Earth, the Moon's surface must have plenty of pieces of terrestrial rock scattered over it too. Another possibility - finding cometary material in the shadowy depths of the Moon's polar craters, the walls of some of which are so steep that their floors are never touched by sunlight... 

Of course, there's no point just landing *anywhere* on the Moon, when it has such a great selection of outstanding tourist locations! Imagine the thrill of meteorite hunting in the vicinity of the Apollo 11 lunar lander, Eagle, and following in Armstrong's footsteps! (Better not actually walk *in* them tho, the most famous footprints in history will have to be protected so future generations of space explorers can enjoy seeing them when they visit the inevitable "Armstrong Museum" when the Moon is eventually colonised...) And who would turn down the chance to look for meteorites on the floor of the mighty crater Copernicus, a 60 mile wide pit with terraced walls and countless rays of ejecta material spreading away from it? Surely, there'll be *some* pieces of impactor left to find in the heart of the Moon's very own "Meteor Crater"..? 

And after the Moon..? 

2. MARS 

Now we're talking expeditions! Mars, half Earth's size and a frozen, dry little stone of a world,  is at best a 6 month flight away, so travelling to the famous Red Planet will not be for the faint-hearted or weak-willed. It's unlikely there'll be any *private* trips to Mars until so-called "Cycle Ships" are travelling regularly between it and Earth, ferrying engineers, scientists and settlers back and forth. 

Why go to Mars? What would we find there? Well, again, I'd think that a collector would find pretty much the same types of meteorites as those found here on Earth. Mars is quite close in cosmic terms, and won't have been battered by much more exotic material than our own world. Although, having said that, its proximity to the Asteroid Belt May well mean that it has *some* much rarer types and specimens. Mars' thin atmosphere will hardly slow incoming meteoroids, so again I would think that metallic specimens will dominate, and only the hardest and toughest stony meteorites will survive their arrival - unless they were lucky enough to fall in a particularly dusty area, of which we can be pretty sure there are many on Mars.  

And again, there's a very good chance that we'll find terrestrial meteorites on Mars - and it May be one of the best reasons for going there in the first place. Many scientists are now convinced that life travels between planets and bodies in solar systems, a process called "panspermia", and there is much speculation about the possibility of life having started on Earth after being brought here from Mars in a meteorite. We May all be Martians! Of course, the opposite May be true - a meteorite from Earth May have "seeded" Mars with life. We won't know for sure until we go there and look.  

But where to look on Mars? Well, just one glance at those beautiful Viking and Pathfinder pictures is all you need to convince you that the surface of Mars must be *covered* with meteorites! The landscapes of Chryse, Utopia and Ares are so familiar to us, so much like Death Valley or the Australian plains that we can almost *smell* the meteorites that are hidden behind the rocks and boulders dwarfed beneath that pink sky. SO anywhere on Mars will be a good place to look for meteorites. But there are some places where we might have a better chance of succeeding. Mars' poles are icy, bright places, and meteorites will stand out there. Then there May well be "meteorite sinks" at the end of the flood and drainage channels, where ancient martian floods and rivers carried meteoritic material towards a dead-end, leaving it to accumulate there. There are many possibilities, all tantalising, all intriguing.  

And just imagine for a moment how it would feel to find a piece of Earth on Mars, and be able to look up into the sky and see Earth itself shining there like a blue star... 

And after Mars..? 

3. THE BELT... 

As every space-mad kid knows, between Mars and Jupiter is a band, or belt, of small bodies called asteroids. These "minor planets" are, as every meteorite-collector knows, basically just huge meteorites waiting to fall on Earth and be carved-up into conveniently-sized wholesale specimens. Of course, that would be a Bad Thing - the last time that happened the dominant form of life on Earth was WIPed out, and if it happened again it would be *our* turn to become extinct, there'd be nothing Bruce Willis or Morgan Freeman could do about it. So instead, sometime in the next 50 years or so, geologists and scientists will travel out to the Belt - going to the flying mountain, instead of bringing it to them, if you like. Much safer. 

But why? Won't there be very few meteorites on the asteroids themselves? True. But if we go there we can take samples and finally determine which meteorites come from which asteroids. And we'll learn a lot about meteorite formation too. And, being slightly more practical, it will help us to come up with ways to destroy - or at least deflect - any planet-busters which set us in their sights in the future. That seems like a very wise investment to me.  

Okay, leaving the Belt behind, where next on our Meteorite Marathon..? 

4. JUPITER 

... or rather, Jupiter's moons, because Jupiter itself is a big ball of gases and liquids, there's no plundering to be done there!  

But Jupiter, with approaching 30 moons, is almost a solar system in its own right, and many of them will be rich hunting grounds for meteorite collectors. However, Jupiter is a long, long way away - so far from the Sun it takes a dozen Earth years to make one complete orbit of it - so it's unlikely *anyone* will be travelling out to Jupiter until there's a permanently-manned base on Mars, and native-born martians are answering Mankind's instincts to explore.  

And what might we find on the icy and rocky mini-worlds, orbiting this bloated, cloud-streaked behemoth of a planet? Well, surely there'll be an amazing variety of meteorite types, material which has fallen out from the inner solar system, and material which was heading towards the light and heat of the Sun before its journey was interrupted. There's a pretty good chance of finding cometary material too; as we saw demonstrated so spectacularly in 1994, when the 21 fragmented pieces of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter's cloudtops, one by one, Jupiter is like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, sucking-in passing comets and no doubt asteroids too. In fact, many experts agree that if Jupiter wasn't there, Earth would have been hit by many more planet-killers, and we might not be here today.  

The best Jovian hunting grounds for 22nd Century meteorite collectors will be the icy plains of its largest moons, Ganymede,Callisto and Europa. These are three of the so-called Galilean Satellites, named after their discoverer, Galileo, who was the first to glimpse them in the early 1600s thru his crude home-made telescope. There is a fourth Galilean, but Io is covered in sulphur-spewing volcanoes, and as its surface is constantly being reshaped and changed and meteorites that have fallen there recently will already have been lost beneath layers of orange and gold sulphur. But never mind, the other moons provide us with more than enough open icy plainland to search! 

Like Antarctica, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa all have landscapes dominated by ice, so meteorite hunters can expect to find many wonderful specimens there. Harvesting on Europa May be difficult tho: its icy crust (which many astronomers now believe covers a liquid ocean, in which primitive forms of life May have evolved) is fractured and shattered, and criss-crossed with networks of cracks and grooves which will make meteorite hunting perilous and frustrating. But it would be worth it, surely, for the view - from Europa Jupiter would hang in the sky like an enormous bloated, bloodshot eye, staring down at you relentlessly as you searched. Talk about pressure! 

Turning our backs - reluctantly - on Jupiter, where's our next port of call? 

5. SATURN'S MOONS 

Obviously we're talking *far* future here now... Saturn is almost a *billion* miles away, and no-one is going out there until we either have developed nuclear-powered spacecraft, or there is a manned outpost on one of Jupiter's moons. And would the trip be worth it? You bet! 

Like Jupiter, Saturn has many moons, and meteorites have been falling onto them for billions of years. Their surfaces are icy - tho not very bright - and, tho cratered, in areas are smooth enough to allow some serious meteorite hunting and recovery. (Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, will *not* be very suitable for a future Bob Haag to try his luck on tho: this giant moon has a thick atmosphere, and has a surface the makeup and structure of which we can only guess at. In fact, Titan May resemble the Earth of billions of years ago, when life first started to evolve, and May have primitive lifeforms of its own. But conditions down beneath the clouds will make meteorite-hunting all but impossible.) 

And in my opinion, Saturn has one absolute Must See location for our 22nd century collector. One of its tiny moons, Mimas, is dominated by an enormous impact crater called "Herschel". IN fact, the moon probably only just survived the impact which created the crater - if the object which blasted it out had been larger, or had hit harder, then Mimas would probably have been shattered into pieces. But the moon survived, and today bears its scar proudly... and if you were to travel to Mimas, land inside Herschel, and make the long and arduous trek to the summit of the mountain peak which sits at its centre, you would be rewarded with one of the most stunning sights in the Solar System ...  

You would see Saturn's rings cutting the planet, and the sky itself, in half, like a razor edge splitting your world in half. The rings would look like an enormous swordblade, jabbing down from the sky, cleaving Saturn in two. Who would not want to enjoy such a view? And surrounded by meteorite fragments too! 

So, there you have it, a 22nd century meteorite collector's wish-list of Places To Go Hunt. There are others too - bouncing across the icy landscapes of a cometary nucleus appeals greatly to me, watching the crust around me break open and send huge jets of gas and dust into the sky to paint beautiful ice haloes around the Sun, planets and brightest stars - but I think that's more than enough to be going on with for now. So, next time you're out hunting, and feeling frustrated at your lack of success, take a moment to look up at the sky, and imagine you've gone forward in time and are on The Moon, Mars, Europa or Mimas instead.  

Because one day someone will be.  

© Stuart Atkinson 2002