The research activity of our group is focused in four different aspects, namely:

• The recovery and characterisation of new meteorites to study their physico-chemical properties and assess their parent bodies
• The study of aqueous alteration in meteorites to infer the pathways in which water arrived to rocky planets and how meteorite minerals catalysed complex organics from in an astrobiological context
• The remote sensing study of asteroids and comets to better understand their nature
• The study of meteoroid interaction with the atmosphere of the Earth producing meteors or fireballs (we lead the SPMN network) to decipher the dynamic origin of hazardous rocks.
   

In the field of meteorite characterisation our center has being recognised as international repository of NASA Antarctic meteorites. We have also recovered and characterised the last two Spanish meteorite falls: Villalbeto de la Peña ordinary chondrite in 2004 and Puerto Lápice (2007). We are also contributing to the identification of unnoticed meteorite falls like e.g. Ardón occurred in 1931. On the other hand, we are contributing to the study of meteorite falls in South America with the recent characterisation of Cali (2009) and Berduc (2010) chondrite falls occurred in Colombia and Argentina respectively. Among other achievements, we also leaded the characterisation of a meteorite find called Claromecó in 2016.

It is well known that the rocky planets were formed from planetesimals accreted under highly reducing conditions, so the origin of water and organics is a matter of debate. In reference to our studies about water availability in our planetary system, the study of meteorites coming from asteroids, Moon, Mars or Vesta allow us to confirm that the so-called liquid element was omnipresent all over the outer regions of our solar system. The most primitive meteorites analysed in our laboratories reveal that their parent asteroids (and in few cases even evolved comets) were soaked in water at an early time, just after their accretion and about 50 millions of years before the consolidation of Earth. We are leading laboratory studies and experiments to understand the role of water in the formation of so-called secondary minerals, a way in which water is continuously arriving to Earth as it was bonded in aqueous alteration minerals and incorporated in solid rocks.
 
Concerning the remote study of asteroids and comets using telescopes, we perform CCD and spectroscopic observations of these bodies in order to get accurate photometric measurements with different standard filters. Earth-crossers and main-Belt asteroids are among our targets. However, the first of them can be only observed during close approaches to Earth, being the most direct source of contemporary hazard to us. The 0.8 m Joan Oró Telescope located at Montsec Astronomical Observatory (Catalonia) allows a wide range of research in the minor bodies domain to be carried out. Our Near Earth Asteroids and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids programs during close approaches to our planet are also complemented with campaigns collecting disk-integrated photometry of selected main belt asteroids to enhance the Solar System science coming out from the Gaia space mission.           
 
Finally, in the framework of the SPMN network that we built twenty years ago in cooperation with other research centres and universities, we want to collect the maximum information about meteorite falls, and the recovery of new meteorites, as we did previously with Villalbeto de la Peña in 2004 and Puerto Lápice in 2007. Our stations continuously record meteors and fireballs over the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, allowing us to reconstruct trajectories and assess the origin of the rocks that penetrate in the Earth’s atmosphere. Thanks to the extracted orbital information of hundreds of fireballs we have demonstrated that Near Earth Asteroids are the source of large rocks that produce meteorite falls. On the other hand, in the framework of the Spanish Fireball and Meteorite Network (SPMN), a dynamic study of the orbital evolution of meteoroids reaching the Earth will be also performed to identify the current sources of meteorites arriving to our planet. Being the meteorites free-delivered samples from remote objects of the solar system, their study and characterisation in our laboratories is a source of scientific, and technologic opportunity.