Extraterrestrial materials

The detection of interstellar dust in Antarctica was done by the measurement of the radionuclides Fe-60 and Mn-53 by highly sensitive Accelerator mass spectrometry, where Fe-60 is the clear signature for a recent-supernova origin.

Material obtained from sample-return missions are considered pristine and uncontaminated, and their curation and study must take place at specialized facilities where the samples are protected from Earthly contamination and from contact with the atmosphere.

Restricted bodies include planets or moons suspected to have either past or present habitable environments to microscopic life, and therefore must be treated as extremely biohazardous.

[19][20][21] Knowledge of these average planetary system elemental abundances is serving as a tool for tracking chemical and physical processes involved in the formation of planets, and the evolution of their surfaces.

Noble gases are particularly useful because they avoid chemical reactions, secondly because many of them have more than one isotope on which to carry the signature of nuclear processes, and because they are relatively easy to extract from solid materials by simple heating.

These spallation effects can alter the trace element isotopic composition of specimens in ways which allow researchers to deduct the nature of their exposure in space.

For example, the Murchison meteorite landed in Australia in 1967, but its parent body apparently underwent a collision event about 800,000 years ago[26] which broke it into meter-sized pieces.

[27][28][29] The abundant organic compounds in primitive meteorites and interplanetary dust particles are thought to originate largely in the interstellar medium.