After the meteorites are found in the field, they are shipped still frozen to the Antarctic Meteorite Curation labs at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There the meteorites are carefully dried and cracked open, and small pieces are broken out for study as thin sections. From these initial characterizations, a short description is written up and distributed bi-annually in the Antarctic Meteorite Newsletter. From these descriptions, meteorite researchers can request samples to conduct their own science on the specimens. As of June of this year, more thant 10,000 specimens had been distributed to more than 200 scientists from 52 different labs around the world.