The Winchcombe meteorite is a

carbonaceous chondrite Carbonaceous chondrites or C chondrites are a class of chondritic meteorites comprising at least 8 known groups and many ungrouped meteorites. They include some of the most primitive known meteorites. The C chondrites represent only a small propo ...

meteorite A meteorite is a rock (geology), rock that originated in outer space and has fallen to the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the original object enters the atmosphere, various factors such as friction, pressure, and chemical ...

that was observed entering the Earth's atmosphere as a fluorescent green fireball over

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, England, at 21:54 on 28 February 2021. Due to a public appeal, fragments were quickly recovered from the village of

Winchcombe Winchcombe () is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Tewkesbury in the county of Gloucestershire, England, situated northeast of Cheltenham. The population was recorded as 4,538 in the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 census and ...

, enabling it to be collected for analysis before becoming degraded. It is a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite originating from the

asteroid belt The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids ...

between

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

and

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a Jupiter mass, mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined a ...

. It was the first meteorite found in Britain since 1991. Fragments of the meterorite were displayed at the London Natural History Museum on 17 May 2021.

Observation

Images of the

meteoroid A meteoroid ( ) is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. Meteoroids are distinguished as objects significantly smaller than ''asteroids'', ranging in size from grains to objects up to wide. Objects smaller than meteoroids are classifie ...

falling to Earth were captured by six camera networks of the UK Fireball Alliance, which is led by the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history scientific collection, collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleo ...

, as well as on the doorbell cameras of private dwellings. There were also over 1,000 eyewitness reports from the UK and elsewhere in Northern Europe, as well as a

sonic boom A sonic boom is a sound associated with shock waves created when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding similar to an explosion or a thunderclap to ...

heard in the local area. These observations allowed its trajectory to be reconstructed. A public appeal was issued for fragments.

Recovery

Subsequently, a family found a pile of dark stones and powder on the driveway of their home in

. They had heard a sound at the time when the meteorite hit but did not investigate outside until the morning; upon discovering the fragments, they placed them in a bag and these were taken to London for analysis. In total of material was collected from their driveway and lawn. In the following days further fragments were found nearby, including the largest single stone from the meteorite found on farmland and weighing , but this split in two during recovery. On 21 March 2021, meteorite hunter Chris Casey found a half stone on a grass verge in Woodmancote. This was followed by another find of on 23 March 2021 in Bishop's Cleeve. On 25 March 2021, Casey and Luther Jackson found a stone in Bishop's Cleeve and on 1 April 2021, Jackson, while hunting with Casey and Graham Ensor, found a fragmented stone on a Bishop's Cleeve footpath. The total amount recovered stands at , comprising hundreds of pieces. On 8 September 2021, of the indented section of

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

driveway where the meteorite landed was removed and taken to London's Natural History Museum. Pieces of the Winchcombe meteorite are now part of a display in the Winchcombe Museum, which tells the story of its origins, unexpected arrival and its scientific significance.

Composition and classification

The meteorite is thought to be a

, the first collected on impact in Britain. The fragment did not experience rainfall and was placed in a protected environment within 12 hours of falling to Earth, meaning that the quality of the sample is comparable to those retrieved by probes from

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

sDr Luke Daly of UK Fireball Alliance: talk to the Royal Geographical Society, 11 March 2021. and offers a "near-pristine record of the composition of primitive asteroids." It is of a similar type to that retrieved by the '' Hayabusa2'' mission from the asteroid 162173 Ryugu.

References

External links

'Fireball fragments recovered in Gloucestershire', BBC, 00:24 mins, 8 March 2021

'Winchcombe meteorite: "My legs went wobbly"', BBC, 03:18 mins, 8 March 2021

'Winchcombe meteorite: Cotswold town reacts to space rock discovery', BBC, 01:51 mins, 9 March 2021

'Winchcombe meteorite goes on display in Natural History Museum', BBC, 02:13, 14 May 2021

'Winchcombe meteorite: Is this the UK's most important fireball?', BBC, 1:55, 21 January 2023
{{2021 in space 2021 in England Chondrite meteorites Meteorite falls Meteorites found in the United Kingdom History of Gloucestershire Modern Earth impact events