BAMM! : Belgian Antarctic Meteorites and Micrometeorites to document solar system formation and evolution.

Since 2009, joint Belgian-Japanese missions in Antartica (SAMBA project) have recovered more than 1200 highly pristine and unique meteorites from the blue ice fields surrounding the Sor Rondane Mountains. This new Antarctic project significantly extends the Belgian meteorite patrimony and stimulates meteorite curation and research at federal institutes and universities in Belgium, supported by the BELAM and ADMUNDSEN - BELSPO projects.
More recently (2013), an equally rich and pristine collection of micrometeorites was recovered in de sedimentary traps near Sor Rondane Mountain summits. This novel BRAINS projects builds on and expands the assembled expterise, and centers in a number of highly promising, but previously unexplored research opportunities provided by this valuable set of newly recovered extraterrestrial samples.
This study entails:
- a detailed study of micrometeorites and their ingeneous textures to better document their parent body precursors, quantify the continuum between unmelted and fully molten objects, and further constrain the effects of rapid melting, melt extraction and silicate-metal segregation on tyhe petrological, chemical and isotopic characteristics of the precursor materials.
- a precise cheracterization of the isotope anomalies existing in bulk meteorite samples, and their counterparts in the constituent mineralogical phases measured by in situ mass spectronomy to better understand the presence and destruction of nucleosynthetic anomaly carrier phases during nebular and planetary processes.