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| HED meteorite | |
|---|---|
| Name | HED meteorite |
| Type | Achondrite |
| Class | Howardite–Eucrite–Diogenite (HED) |
| Parent body | Vesta (inferred) |
| Composition | Pyroxene, plagioclase, olivine, metal (minor) |
| Discovered | Various (19th–21st centuries) |
| Country | Global (notable Antarctic finds) |
HED meteorite
HED meteorite samples are a group of achondritic extraterrestrial rocks studied in planetary science, meteoritics, and cosmochemistry; researchers from institutions such as Smithsonian Institution, NASA, European Space Agency, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Max Planck Society have compared HED materials with data from missions like Dawn (spacecraft), Hubble Space Telescope, NEAR Shoemaker, Galileo (spacecraft), and Hayabusa to constrain solar system formation, asteroid differentiation, and magmatic processes.
HED meteorite material comprises three linked lithologies—howardites, eucrites, and diogenites—recognized by curators at museums such as the Natural History Museum, London, American Museum of Natural History, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, and researchers at universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of Arizona, and University of California, Berkeley; classification schemes by committees like the Meteoritical Society integrate petrography, isotopic data from laboratories such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and spectral comparisons drawn with remote sensing from Dawn (spacecraft) and telescopic surveys by institutions including the European Southern Observatory.
The HED suite is divided into eucrites (basaltic crustal rocks), diogenites (orthopyroxene-rich cumulates), and howardites (regolith breccias), classifications formalized through work at facilities like the Field Museum, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and isotope laboratories at Carnegie Institution for Science; major mineral phases include pigeonite, orthopyroxene, and plagioclase feldspar, with trace phases investigated using instruments from Advanced Photon Source, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, and techniques refined at California Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo, and Imperial College London.
Multiple lines of evidence tie HED rocks to the asteroid 4 Vesta through spectral matches between HED reflectance spectra and telescopic data from Hubble Space Telescope and spacecraft mapping by Dawn (spacecraft); dynamical pathways invoking resonances such as the 3:1 Kirkwood gap and the ν6 secular resonance and modeling by groups at Southwest Research Institute, University of Colorado Boulder, Brown University, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory explain delivery from Vesta family collisions cataloged by surveys from Sloan Digital Sky Survey, NEOWISE, and teams at Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.
Petrographic and mineral chemical studies by researchers at Johnson Space Center, Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, ETH Zurich, University of Münster, University of New Mexico, and University of Chicago reveal textures ranging from fine-grained basaltic matrices to coarse orthopyroxene cumulates; analytical techniques such as electron microprobe analysis, secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), transmission electron microscopy at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and microprobe work at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory quantify major, minor, and trace element distributions, oxygen isotope ratios, and crystallization sequences constrained with geochronology from University of Cambridge and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Shock features, melting, and metamorphic recrystallization observed in HED samples have been interpreted through experimental petrology at University of Minnesota, University of Tokyo, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and high-pressure work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; thermal modeling by groups at California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and University of California, Los Angeles uses radiometric ages, cooling rates, and shock barometry to reconstruct impact histories tied to collisional events in the main belt cataloged by the Minor Planet Center and studies published via American Geophysical Union and Geological Society of America forums.
Significant HED specimens have been recovered from Antarctic expeditions organized by United States Antarctic Program, Australian Antarctic Division, Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition, and British Antarctic Survey, with curated falls and finds housed at repositories including the Smithsonian Institution, Natural History Museum, London, National Museum of Natural History, Paris, and regional collections at National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D.C.) and university museums; well-documented falls and strewn fields have provenance records analyzed by the Meteoritical Bulletin community and cataloged alongside falls from historical meteorite falls studied by teams at University of Arizona and University of Alberta.
HED meteorite research informs models of planetary differentiation, mantle-crust formation, and volatile delivery studied by investigators at NASA Ames Research Center, European Space Agency, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Carnegie Institution for Science, and academic groups at Stanford University, Columbia University, and University of Oxford; methods include isotopic systematics (Pb–Pb, Sm–Nd, Rb–Sr) applied in labs like Geochronology Center, Harvard, cosmochemical modeling at University of Washington, and comparative planetology integrating datasets from missions such as Dawn (spacecraft), telescopes like Keck Observatory and Very Large Telescope, and meteorite curation standards set by the Meteoritical Society and museum protocols at Natural History Museum, London.
Category:Meteorites