Written requests should be sent to the NASA Educator Resource Center in your geographic area at least one month before the requested loan date. Spacelink has all the addresses and contact numbers for these Centers. To order the slide set separately, please contact CORE . Meteorites are the oldest rocks we have, more than 4.5 billion years old, so they contain information about events that took place in the gas-dust cloud in which the Sun and planets formed. Meteorites contain evidence about asteroid break up and about how long it takes to transport pieces to orbits that intersect Earth's orbit.
Large meteorites can make craters on Earth and other planets.
Meteorite research forms the common ground among astrophysics, geology, cosmochemistry, organic chemistry, and astronomy. Some meteorites even contain dust grains that existed in interstellar space before the Solar System formed. A few meteorites contain water and organic compounds, so may be samples of the material that made the ocean and atmosphere and provided the raw materials from which life evolved. Some meteorites formed on asteroids that melted, so contain information about melting processes on small bodies with low gravitational fields. Most meteorites are pieces of asteroids, so they tell us about the nature of the little planets in the asteroid belt.