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Published July 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Metallic messengers from the cosmos: Rare (Al,Cu)-bearing meteorites from the Project Stardust collection

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Florence
  • 2. ROR icon University of Oslo
  • 3. ROR icon Institute for Energy Technology
  • 4. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 5. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We report the discovery of (Al,Cu)‐bearing metallic alloys in two micrometeorites found in the Project Stardust collection gathered from urban rooftop environments in Norway. Most of the alloys are the same as those found in the Khatyrka meteorite and other micrometeorites, though one has a composition that has not been reported previously. Oxygen isotope ratio measurements using secondary ion mass spectrometry show that the Project Stardust samples reported here, like all earlier examples of natural (Al,Cu)‐bearing alloys, contain material of chondritic affinity.

Copyright and License

© 2025 The Author(s). Meteoritics & Planetary Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Meteoritical Society.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

SEM, EBSD, EDS, and EPMA analyses were carried out at the Caltech GPS Division Analytical Facility, which is supported, in part, by NSF Grants EAR-2117942, DMR-0080065 and DMR-2444631. FIB-TEM/STEM-EDS-SAED study was conducted at Princeton’s Imaging and Analysis Center, which is partially supported by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-MRSEC program (DMR-2011750). The research was conducted within the Space It Up project funded by the Italian Space Agency, ASI, and the Ministry of University and Research, MUR, under contract n. 2024-5-E.0-CUP n. I53D24000060005. Open access publishing facilitated by Universita degli Studi di Firenze, as part of the Wiley - CRUI-CARE agreement.

Open access publishing facilitated by Universita degli Studi di Firenze, as part of the Wiley - CRUI-CARE agreement.

Supplemental Material

Figure S1, Figure S2, Figure S3, Figure S4, Figure S5, Table S1 (DOCX)

Files

Meteorit Planetary Scien - 2025 - Bindi - Metallic messengers from the cosmos Rare Al Cu ‐bearing meteorites from the.pdf

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Additional details

Related works

Is supplemented by
Supplemental Material: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1111%2Fmaps.14377&file=maps14377-sup-0001-DataS1.docx (URL)

Funding

National Science Foundation
EAR-2117942
National Science Foundation
DMR-0080065
National Science Foundation
DMR-2444631
National Science Foundation
DMR-2011750
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
2024‐5‐E.0‐CUP n. I53D24000060005

Dates

Accepted
2025-05-30
Available
2025-06-11
Version of record online
Available
2025-07-24
Issue online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Publication Status
Published