A Greek geologist participates in the organized NASA eight-member mission to conduct meteorite research in Antarctica.
Yiannis Baziotis, an Assistant Professor at the University of Athens will remain in McMurdo’s base, in icy cold continent until January 2018.
He shares his impressions of the “spectacular beauty” of Antarctica writing on Facebook.
“It is a special experience for someone coming from the Mediterranean, let alone a Greek like me, to live the dream of participating in the ANSMET mission”.
The Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) is a US-led field-based science project, that recovers meteorite specimens from Antarctica.
“In a place like McMurdo’s base, preparing the equipment, having breakfast at a table with people of at least five different nationalities, cycling on the icy and muddy “streets” around the base, visiting the Hutpoint, and seeing the seals glide like Australian surfers in the waves, is just a few of the experiences I experienced in the first days of the mission,” he wrote in his Facebook account.
ANSMET was established by NASA in 1976. Since then, missions to Antarctica have discovered and studied more than 21,000 specimens from meteorite stranding surfaces.
These specimens are a reliable, continuous source of new, non-microscopic extra-terrestrial material and support thousands of scientists from around the globe as they seek essential “ground-truth” concerning the materials that make up the asteroids, planets, and other bodies of our solar system.
