Astromaterials News
Jemma Davidson, Astromaterials Curator
Volume 8 No. 2 • October 2026
About the Astromaterials Newsletter:
Welcome to the seventeenth issue of the Astromaterials Newsletter. The Astromaterials Newsletter is produced by the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). Its purpose is to keep the extraterrestrial sample science community informed about updates to our policies, collections, staffing, and available samples. The Astromaterials Newsletter serves as the exclusive mechanism for announcing new samples or sample opportunities across all of NASA's astromaterials collections. It is published on the same cadence as the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter, ensuring consistent and timely communication with the scientific community.
The primary aim of the Astromaterials Newsletter is to maximize the scientific return from NASA's astromaterials collections by improving communication and raising awareness of sample availability within the scientific community. A key part of this effort is providing timely updates about activities in our laboratories and at JSC that may impact the collections or the timing of sample allocations. Most importantly, the newsletter was established to ensure a fair and transparent process for disseminating information about available samples across all collections. As always, detailed information about NASA's astromaterials samples can be found in each collection's sample catalog, available on our website (https://curator.jsc.nasa.gov/). Any new samples announced in this issue will also be reflected in the appropriate catalog online.
Updates from the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office:
Last fall, at the beginning of the fiscal year, we experienced a historic length Government furlough that delayed the release of the Fall 2025 newsletter, processing of allocations, execution of loan agreements, and PI correspondence. I am happy to announce that we have caught up and I would like to acknowledge the significant efforts of the entire Curation team to make that happen. Some of you will have felt the effects of these delays and we appreciate your understanding and patience. Your kind words to the team go a long way.
Despite these challenges, Fiscal Year 2026 was a highly productive year for the Curation Office. In parallel with our ongoing responsibilities in the preservation, characterization, and allocation of NASA's astromaterials collections, we are almost fully compliant with NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR) 7100.5, Curation of Astromaterials. Outstanding items, include some PI inventories and loan agreements. Please be cognizant that no new samples can be allocated to PIs from any collection until these are completed and returned to the relevant Curator(s). Additionally, if they are not completed on the timeline provided to you by the Collection Curator, PI-held samples will be recalled.
NEW THIS ISSUE: Inaugural Curation Community Conversation!
This newsletter marks the launch of our new Curation Community Conversations, which will follow the launch of each of our Spring and Fall newsletters. At the Community Conversations, NASA's Chief Scientist for Astromaterials Curation and NASA's Astromaterials Curator will provide updates to curation activities, collections, available samples, and answer questions that can be submitted ahead of time at the link below.
The first Community Conversation will take place on Monday 2nd November, 2026 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM (EST). Follow this link to join the meeting.
Submit questions ahead of time here:
Submit questions ahead of time here:
Personnel updates in the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office:
I am very excited to be able to provide you with significant Civil Servant hiring updates. While we were in a federal hiring freeze for some time, we are now able to move forward with new hires.
Last month, we onboarded our new Cold Curation Engineer, Ryan Reid. Ryan joins us from Marshall Space Flight Center and will work with our Cold Curation Lead, Michael Huh, to develop new cold curation technologies, primarily a glovebox for the processing and allocation of cold samples to be returned from the Moon by Artemis.
I am delighted to announce that we are fortunate to be welcoming the new U.S. Antarctic Meteorite Curator, Dr. Dara Laczniak, in January 2027. You'll hear from Dara directly in the Spring 2027 newsletter. We are very excited to welcome her to the Curation family!
The entire team would like to thank Dr. Andrea Harrington for serving the sample analysis community and the U.S. Antarctic Meteorite collection as the Interim Curator for the last 18+ months. Andrea adeptly kept one of our largest collections functioning smoothly in addition to her other substantial duties; her dedication to Curation is extremely valued. Thank you, Andrea!
We have also been able to make multiple critical civil servant hires in response to Agency-led insourcing activities and anticipate being able to pursue additional Artemis hires in the near future. New team members will be discussed at the Curation Community Conversation on November 2nd and the Fall ExMAG meeting on November 3rd.
Sample Request Resources
In addition to the plethora of information available on our various collection website pages, we previously participated in a virtual workshop, "How to Become Part of the NASA Planetary Sample Science Community", hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Institute. We discussed NASA's nine current astromaterials collections and how to request samples - the recordings and slides can be viewed online here. The successful workshop serves as a valuable resource for scientists looking to learn more about how to request samples and improve their request success rate. We look forward to participating in more community events in the future.
Astromaterials Data Systems Updates:
The Astromaterials Data System (Astromat) is the primary NASA-sponsored archive for laboratory analyses of returned samples (see NASA's Planetary Science Division's Information and Data Management Policy Supplement to SPD-41A). Astromat supports the extraterrestrial samples community with services that enable sharing, discovery, access, and reuse of data generated by laboratory analysis of astromaterials samples.News from Astromat:
- All content of the AstroRepo has been transferred to the Astromat Data Archive (ADA): AstroRepo was the original data repository of the Astromaterials Data System built for researchers to publish and archive data sets. The ADA until recently only accepted machine-to-machine submissions of data from the OSIRIS-REx mission-specific data system SAMIS. ADA now accepts researcher submissions via the ADA Submission Site and all data archived at Astromat including those originally submitted to the AstroRepo are now searchable and accessible in the ADA.
- Improvements to the Astromat Synthesis search have been completed: The search by "Sample Type" now uses a hierarchical grouping of sample types that makes it easier for you to select the types of samples for which you want data, especially for meteorites. You can select 'Chondrites (Carbonaceous)' or 'Iron (Magmatic)' rather than having to select each sub-type such as CB, CI, CH, etc. individually. Please provide feedback!
- Upcoming webinar on best practices for reporting EPMA procedures (Oct 22, 2026): The Astromaterials Data System team is leading an effort to build community consensus on recommended best practices for reporting analytical procedures with different sample analysis techniques. We will host a webinar in October to introduce this effort and demonstrate the first TAPP (Technique-Aligned Procedure Profile) for EPMA to anyone who is interested. You can register for this webinar through our new TAPP information webpage.
- Astromat Workshop at MetSoc 2026: Thanks to all who participated in the half-day workshop in Frankfurt inside the Senckenberg Museum. It was great to see everyone, and we hope the presentations and discussions were useful. Thanks to Georg Zellmer, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Petrology, for providing an editor's perspective on data publications. The presentations by Kerstin Lehnert and Ruolin Deng are now published in the ADA and available on the Workshop webpage.
Newsletter Highlights:
OSIRIS-REx Sample Requests: The OSIRIS-REx mission has completed the mission sample analysis phase after three outstanding years of sample analysis! Many samples have been returned from the mission team and added to the sample catalog. Find more details on the OSIRIS-REx News page of this issue of the Astromaterials Newsletter.
Cosmic Dust Updates: After many non-flight years, we are back collecting cosmic dust via WB57 flights. Find out more over on the Cosmic Dust Collection page of this
issue.
New Antarctic Meteorites Announced: The
Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter
has announced the characterization and classification of 113 new Antarctic meteorites, primarily ordinary chondrites from the Dominion Range (DOM) 2023-2024 field season.
Hayabusa2 Aggregate Subdivision: Our Hayabusa2 team completed the first subdivisions of aggregate samples that are now available for allocation. Read more on the
Hayabusa2 page.
I appreciate you taking the time to read the Astromaterials News section of the Astromaterials Newsletter.
Ad Astra,
Dr. Jemma Davidson
Astromaterials Curator