Grade-schoolers in San Antonio, Texas are learning a lot about Antarctica and space science from PSI Research Scientist Les Bleamaster.
Between Thanksgiving and the end of January, Bleamaster spent 48 days during Antarctica’s “summer” hunting meteorites with the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) program.
Since returning, Bleamaster has taken his laptop and projector to several grade schools to talk about his experiences and to spark students’ interest in science.
“It’s amazing to go into a classroom of third graders and see their eyes get really big,” Bleamaster says. “They see pictures of space and geologists doing work in the field. They see Antarctica, and they get really excited. I speak to other groups, too, but the presentations to grade schools; that’s the best part of the whole job.”
Bleamaster, a planetary geologist who creates geologic maps of Venus and Mars, uses the opportunity to educate students about geology, engineering, mathematics and the importance of the work being done by NASA and PSI.
He explains that planetary geology is much like Earth-based geology. Scientists need rock samples and pictures of the Earth’s surface to unravel the story of how Earth formed and evolved.
The same procedures apply to the Earth’s Moon, the planets, and other solar system bodies. “While spacecraft take the pictures, the big question is, ‘If we want to study rocks from space where do we get them?'” Bleamaster said. “A big answer to that question is Antarctica”
Although meteorites don’t fall on Antarctica any more often than on other parts of the globe, it’s the perfect place to find them, he said. Rocks stand out on the vast, ice-blue landscape, and just about any rock sitting out on the ice had to drop from space. The rocks also don’t deteriorate or weather after they land because they’re preserved in what amounts to a gigantic, dry freezer.
In addition to collecting rocks on the ice sheet, Bleamaster and the other ANSMET crewmembers searched along the natural barricade formed by the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. The ice gets pushed up against the mountains, sublimates and leaves the meteorites behind.
The ANSMET group – which included scientists from China, the Netherlands, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland and Texas – camped out in six tents in temperatures ranging from 10 below zero to 25 degrees Fahrenheit.
They either searched on foot or rode snowmobiles while looking for meteorites. When they found a meteorite (the team bagged 70 on its best day), the rocks were carefully collected and numbered. Team members recorded the GPS location and locked the meteorite in a box to be transported to Johnson Space Center for analysis.
Those were the good days. On bad days, winds screamed across the ice at 50 knots, and the scientists hunkered down in their tents. During one storm, they stayed tent-bound for nearly five days.
“That 4.5 days in the tent was pretty emotionally wrecking,” Bleamaster said. “Fortunately, I had a solar panel to charge my iPod. That was a lifesaver.”
Living in tents, not showering for 48 days, dealing with constant cold, and enduring storms, coupled with long days of hard physical labor, made this adventure much more difficult than the usual field trip. Isolation, with the closest human beings more than 100 miles away, also was draining. “I missed my wife and kids tremendously,” Bleamaster said.
“If someone had asked me in February whether I would do this again, I would have said, ‘Absolutely not,'” Bleamaster added. “But now, with a little reflection, I’m getting to the point where I probably would consider going again if there’s the opportunity.”
The ANSMET program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and led by principal investigators from Case Western University, has been making annual trips to Antarctica since the 1976. During that time, ANSMET has missed only one year and collected nearly 20,000 meteorites, including the famous Allan Hills meteorite from Mars.
ANSMET’s most important finds include a handful of meteorites that have generated more than 600 research studies since 1988.
“This is what I try to hammer home to the second graders,” Bleamaster said. “Some of these are the oldest rocks we have. We don’t have rocks on Earth from 4.5 billion years ago. These meteorites are the building blocks of the solar system. Studying them lets us really get at the origins of the solar system.”