News

​

Chips of one of the meteorites

We are delighted to share that Dr. Queenie H.S. Chan, our alumni from the class of 2008, has recently reported the discovery of two meteorites containing the ingredients for life. Crashing separately to Earth in 1998, these space rocks had previously circulated in our solar system’s asteroid belt for billions of years. They are the first meteorites found to contain both liquid water and a mix of complex organic compounds such as hydrocarbons and amino acids. Queenie, who is now based at Open University in the United Kingdom conducted this work whilst she was based at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Her work is published in Science Advances and has been covered by international media outlets. Congratulations Queenie!