A team of scientists has published the results of an investigative survey into the Sutter’s Mill meteorite that landed in California in 2012. The results reveal that the meteorite contained a number of features associated with minerals such as olivines, phyllosilicates, carbonates, and possibly pyroxenes, as well as organics. However, a key conclusion of the paper, and one that is likely to be of keen interest to astrobiologists, is confirmation that meteorites can become contaminated by Earth-based organics very quickly.

The paper, “Mid-infrared Study of Stones from the Sutter’s Mill Meteorite,” was published online in the March, 2014 issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The research includes work by co-author Scott Sandford, who leads the new NASA Astrobiology Institute team at the NASA Ames Research Center.