Dr Sarah Crowther is a Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Manchester.

Sarah started out studying chemistry and then changed track slightly to pursue research in planetary science as a member of the Isotope Geochemistry and Cosmochemistry Group at the University of Manchester. Her research looks at the evolution of the early Solar System through laboratory-based chemical analysis of extra-terrestrial materials. A large part of her research focuses on age-dating meteorites, to unravel the thermal and impact histories of their parent asteroids. She is a member of the international Science Team that analyses samples returned by NASA’s Genesis mission, and is part of international teams analysing samples from the Apollo missions, NASA’s Stardust mission and the Japanese Hayabusa mission.

Sarah leads the Earth and Solar System team running the Space Rocks! activities in the Star Field. She was awarded the 2019 Annie Maunder Medal for Outreach by the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition for her work.

Talk: Moon, Meteorites and More…

2019 marks the 50th anniversary Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. The Apollo astronauts did more than just walk on the Moon, they brought 382 kg of Moon rocks back to Earth for scientific study, which proved to be fundamental to our understanding of the Moon.

Apollo samples aren’t the only extra-terrestrial samples we have here on Earth. Join Dr Sarah Crowther to hear about the different types of extra-terrestrial materials we have on Earth, how they got here, and what we can learn from them. And look forward to new samples due to be returned to Earth in the next couple of years.