This first firefight arrived 28 February across the United Kingdom. Then came a meteorite find.
UK Meteor Network
After several days of careful research, an international team has found about 300 grams of a very rare meteorite in the United Kingdom.
The sample, obtained after a fireball seen over the area on February 28, was successfully recovered at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. The carbonaceous chondrite, which contains organisms, amino acids and other nutrients for life, is so rare that it has never been found in that area before.
“So far, this is only the fifth meteorite of its kind with a known orbit, and the most precious because it was recovered immediately after the fall,” said Denis Vida, a graduate fellow at the University. Western Canada suddenly aided the investigation, in a statement.
A key player in the research was the Global Meteor Network, a collaboration between professional and amateur astronauts working together working through its network of cameras – around 300 of them in 22 countries.
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Ames NASA / Eric James
Vida examined the data from the cameras that captured the shower, and concluded that the fireball broke up somewhere about 17 miles high after falling into the Earth’s atmosphere. , along with some information revealing which side it fell on. This information led Vida to allow Ashley King, a meteorite researcher at the Natural History Museum of the United Kingdom, to find the space rock in the scene.
“They are rare, direct evidence we have for meltwater outside of Earth,” Vida said. “Some contain up to 20 per cent water, and are full of organic fertilizers, including amino acids.”
What helped Vida’s team at Western draw on the experience of recovering from a similar meteorite in 2000, when a fireball spread fragments in northwestern British Columbia in Canada, over on Tagish Lake.
Most of the carbonaceous chondrites fell on the ice in that 2000 event. Because they are much darker than the white ice around them, the heat of the sun warmed the meteors and made them melt through the ice. By the time meteorite explorers rescued the space rocks, they were destroyed.
This situation makes the successful UK meteorite revival more valuable, with Vida comparing the complexity of what he found to the recently returned sample mission from the Ryugu asteroid with the Hayabusa2 mission from Japan.