The coolest adventure ever!
Do you want to explore the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid without ever leaving Earth? You can by visiting Antarctica! Let me explain: There are rocks floating through space that have been blasted off the surface of asteroids, the Moon, and even Mars. Occasionally this debris falls to earth as "shooting stars"; if they survive their fiery passage through the atmosphere and land on Earth, these rocks are called meteorites. Each year experienced polar explorers take a band of adventurous graduate students, astronauts, and scientists on a trip into the frozen interior of Antarctica to search for space rocks in a program known as The Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET).
Antarctica is the best place in the world to find meteorites, but Antarctica is also the most challenging. It is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and most dangerous continent in the world. Although Antarctica is remarkably hazardous it is also full of sublime, stark beauty. Juliane Gross, who searched for meteorites in Antarctica in 2017 said, "If magic truly exists on this Earth, it exists in Antarctica. But at the same time Antarctica is trying to kill you every second you are out there."
This book takes the reader on a step by step journey on a typical ANSMET expedition. From Christchurch, New Zealand, the team embarks on a voyage to McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and then to the Transantarctic Mountains. These volunteers happily endure the dangers and rigors of living in a hostile environment for the opportunity to participate in the ultimate Easter egg hunt. These expeditions have brought back some of the most scientifically important, rarest, and valuable rocks ever found on Earth. Along the way, this book provides background information on asteroids, planets, the formation of the solar system, glaciology, planetary geology, orbital physics, and polar exploration.
