The fall, recovery, orbit, and composition of the Tagish Lake meteorite: a new type of carbonaceous chondrite

P G Brown; A R Hildebrand; M E Zolensky; M Grady; R N Clayton; T K Mayeda; E Tagliaferri; R Spalding; N D MacRae; E L Hoffman; D W Mittlefehldt; J F Wacker; J A Bird; M D Campbell; R Carpenter; H Gingerich; M Glatiotis; E Greiner; M J Mazur; P J McCausland; H Plotkin; T Rubak Mazur

doi:10.1126/science.290.5490.320

The fall, recovery, orbit, and composition of the Tagish Lake meteorite: a new type of carbonaceous chondrite

Science. 2000 Oct 13;290(5490):320-5. doi: 10.1126/science.290.5490.320.

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 3K7, Canada.

PMID: 11030647
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5490.320

Abstract

The preatmospheric mass of the Tagish Lake meteoroid was about 200,000 kilograms. Its calculated orbit indicates affinity to the Apollo asteroids with a semimajor axis in the middle of the asteroid belt, consistent with a linkage to low-albedo C, D, and P type asteroids. The mineralogy, oxygen isotope, and bulk chemical composition of recovered samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite are intermediate between CM and CI meteorites. These data suggest that the Tagish Lake meteorite may be one of the most primitive solar system materials yet studied.