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Atmospheric nitrogen may be a necessary ingredient for the habitability of a planet since its presence helps to prevent water loss from a planet. The present day nitrogen isotopic ratio, $^{15}$N/$^{14}$N, in the Earth's atmosphere is a…
Protoplanetary disks are dust-rich structures around young stars. The crystalline and amorphous materials contained within these disks are variably thermally processed and accreted to make bodies of a wide range of sizes and compositions,…
The class of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites are examples of material from the solar system which have been relatively unchanged from the time of their initial formation. These meteorites have been classified according to the…
Comets contain abundant amounts of organic and inorganic species. Many of the volatile molecules in comets have also been observed in the interstellar medium and some of them even with similar relative abundances, indicating formation under…
We present here several laboratory analyses performed on the freshly fallen Mukundpura CM chondrite. Results of infrared transmission spectroscopy, thermogravimetry analysis and reflectance spectroscopy show that Mukundpura is mainly…
We have measured the concentration, isotopic composition and thermal release profiles of Mercury (Hg) in a suite of meteorites, including both chondrites and achondrites. We find large variations in Hg concentration between different…
Magmatic iron meteorite groups such as IIAB, IIIAB and IVA, represent the largest sampling of extraterrestrial core material from the earliest accreted distinct planetary bodies in the solar system. Chromium isotope compositions of…
We report the discovery of five SiC grains and one graphite grain isolated from the Murchison carbonaceous meteorite whose major-element isotopic compositions indicate an origin in nova explosions. The grains are characterized by low…
Carbonaceous chondrites are samples from planetesimals that formed 2-4 million years after solar system formation began. They consist of distinct dust components formed at different times and locations in the accretion disk and whose…
Astronomical observations and isotopic measurements of meteorites suggest that substructures are common in protoplanetary disks and may even have existed in the solar nebula. Here, we conduct paleomagnetic measurements of chondrules in CO…
The porosity of an asteroid is important when studying the evolution of our solar system through small bodies and for planning mitigation strategies to avoid disasters due to asteroid impacts. Our knowledge of asteroid porosity largely…
A persistent question in exoplanet demographics is whether exoplanetary systems form from similar compositional building blocks to our own. Polluted white dwarf stars offer a unique way to address this question as they provide measurements…
Titan's abundant atmospheric N2 and CH4 gases are notable characteristics of the moon that may help constrain its origins and evolution. Previous work suggests that atmospheric CH4 is lost on geologically short timescales and may be…
Earth's water, intrinsic oxidation state, and metal core density are fundamental chemical features of our planet. Studies of exoplanets provide a useful context for elucidating the source of these chemical traits. Planet formation and…
High temperature condensates found in meteorites display uranium isotopic variations (235U/238U) that complicate dating of the formation of the Solar System and whose origin remains mysterious. It is possible that these variations are due…
Sugars of extraterrestrial origin have been observed in the interstellar medium (ISM), in at least one comet spectrum, and in several carbonaceous chondritic meteorites that have been recovered from the surface of the Earth. The origins of…
Meteorites contain minerals from Solar System asteroids with different properties (like size, presence of water, core formation). We provide new mid-IR transmission spectra of powdered meteorites to obtain templates of how mid-IR spectra of…
Meteorite matrices from primitive chondrites are an interplay of ingredients at the sub-micron scale, which requires analytical techniques with the nanometer spatial resolution to decipher the composition of individual components in their…
The diverse isotopic anomalies of meteorites demonstrate that the protoplanetary disk was composed of components from different stellar sources, which mixed in the disk and formed the planetary bodies. However, the origin of the accretion…
The fundamentally different isotopic compositions of non-carbonaceous (NC) and carbonaceous (CC) meteorites reveal the presence of two distinct reservoirs in the solar protoplanetary disk that were likely separated by Jupiter. However, the…