Mineralogist

In 1865, the Danish geologist and mineralogist Johan Georg Forchhammer, with the help of naval and civilian collaborators, collected numerous samples of seawater from the Northern Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean. He wanted to determine why the salinity of seawater varies in different areas of the ocean.

The space agency's mineralogist says this asteroid was unique because researchers can compare the data collected before it came down, with the recovered fragments.