Classification of Grove Mountains meteorites and its significance

Meteorites are the extraterrestrial rocks, which provide insights into the origin and evolution of the solar system. During the past half century, a great number of meteorites has been discovered on the Antarctic Ice Sheet, confirming that the Antarctica is the most important meteorite concentration area on the earth. Since the first four Antarctic meteorites were found in Grove Mountains in 1998, a total of 9834 meteorites have been collected by four subsequent expeditions. It opens 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 made following progresses: (1) 2433 meteorites, which include many special meteorites, e.g. Martian meteorites, ureilites and carbonaceous chondrites, have been classified. (2) the Antarctic meteorite curation and the sample sharing 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) young generation researchers on meteorite are trained through the cooperation of many universities and institutes on meteorite classification.