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This is the first time in 30 years that a meteorite has been recovered in the United Kingdom.
Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London
Scientists have sent daring missions to the wilds of space to recover pieces of asteroids. (Here looks at you, Hayabusa2 and Osiris-Rex.) After a Breathtaking fireball meteor exploded across UK on February 28, scientists recovered some of the precious fragments scattered on the ground.
“For the first time in 30 years, a meteorite has been recovered in the UK after landing in the driveway of a house in Gloucestershire,” the Natural History Museum in London said in a statement on Tuesday. The museum called the carbonaceous chondrite meteorite “surprisingly rare” and said it would give scientists a glimpse into the early solar system dating back 4.6 billion years ago.
Ever since the dark, brittle rock landed in the town of Winchcombe, it is already known as the “Winchcombe Meteorite”. According to the museum, carbonaceous chondrite meteorites “are made up of a mixture of minerals and organic compounds, including the building blocks of life itself: amino acids.”
One of the largest pieces of meteorite was found in an alley in the town of Winchcombe in the UK.
UK Meteor Network
The rare meteorite left Sara Russell, a researcher at the Museum of Natural History, “speechless with excitement.” So far, nearly 10.6 ounces (300 grams) of space rock has been recovered from the ground, giving scientists a considerable amount of material to study. Russell said the fragments looked like material collected by the Hayabusa2 and Osiris-Rex space missions.
The UK Meteor Observation Network, a citizen science group that tracks meteor observations, captured the fireball event on camera and helped reduce the potential debris field and the likely origin of the meteor, which is tracing back to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
“This is history in the making,” the UK Meteor Observation Network said in a statement. “The recovery of a meteorite fragment with data from meteorite camera networks is a first for the UK.”
The meteorite’s rapid recovery and excellent preservation means scientists have a pristine sample to study that will connect with research on asteroid material returned from space. Russell said: “This is absolutely a dream come true.”
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