Abstract:

Meteorites are the extraterrestrial rocks,which provide insights into the origin and evolution of the solar system.In the past half century,a great number of meteorites have been discovered on the Antarctic Ice Sheet,confirming that the Antarctica is the most important meteorite concentration in the earth.Since the first four Antarctic meteorites were found in Grove Mountains in 1998,a total number of 9834 meteorites have been collected by four expeditions.It breaks a new field of meteorite study in China,and also accumulates a great deal of scientific samples for China.Recently,classification of Grove Mountains meteorites has been carried out for 6 years,and some progresses have been made:(1) 684 meteorites,including many special meteorites,e.g.Martian meteorites,ureilites and carbonaceous chondrites,have been classified;(2) The Antarctic meteorite house and the sharing net system are set up preliminarily;(3) The classification procedure,the management of meteorite samples,and the application procedure for the Antarctic meteorites are completed after the systematic classification during these years;(4) The young scientists are trained through the cooperation of many universities and institutes on meteorite classification.