Latest Meteorites Stories

Robert Elliot, who has one of U.K.'s largest private collections of space artifacts, is putting his collection up for auction. He has over 170 items that are expected to be worth over $824,000. One of the most notable pieces is part of the Hambleton meteorite that was found in Yorkshire in 2005. The Lyon and Turbull auction will take place in Edinburgh on August 18. Elliot found 12 pounds of the Hambleton meteorite beside a forest track in North Yorkshire.  This piece is expected to sell...

PASADENA, Calif., Aug. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon that is providing researchers more details about the Red Planet's environmental history. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The rock, dubbed "Block Island," is larger than any other known meteorite on Mars. Scientists calculate it is too massive to have hit the ground without disintegrating unless Mars had a much...

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is investigating a metallic meteorite the size of a large watermelon that is providing researchers more details about the Red Planet's environmental history.The rock, dubbed "Block Island," is larger than any other known meteorite on Mars. Scientists calculate it is too massive to have hit the ground without disintegrating unless Mars had a much thicker atmosphere than it has now when the rock fell. Atmosphere slows the descent of meteorites. Additional...

Treasure hunters are searching Maryland and Pennsylvania for something they say might fetch a higher price than gold -- pieces of a meteorite. The Mason-Dixon meteorite was sighted Monday night, The Baltimore Sun reported. Some treasure seekers have traveled long distances to join the search. Steve Meteorite Man Arnold arrived Wednesday after a flight from Arkansas. This is the Super Bowl, he said. Meteorite hunters like Arnold try to figure out where the chunk of interplanetary rock might...

Meteorites provide valuable information about the early history of the solar system. A group of Swiss geologists have conducted systematic meteorite searches in Oman since 2001, and they recently returned from their latest hunt.Most meteorites are fragments of asteroids, some of which contain organic matter. Some meteorites preserve information on the chemical make-up of the solar system before the planets formed. Other meteorites are impact debris from the surfaces of the Moon and Mars....

A meteorite chunk that crashed into a suburban Chicago home in 2003 is among the items in a natural history auction by Dallas-based Heritage Auctions.The 5-pound piece of meteorite, dubbed the Garza stone after Noe Garza, whose Park Forest home was struck by the rock, is believed by scientists to have originated as a 10-ton meteorite that hit the atmosphere and broke up before striking the Garza home on the evening of March 26, 2003, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.Very few meteorites...

Canadians living north and northeast of Toronto are being asked to help search for meteorite fragments from a fireball last month.In a release, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and the University of Western Ontario in London said analysis of a network of sky camera footage shows a slow-moving fireball swept eastward on March 15 at 8:37 p.m. near the small city of Newmarket.The museum is scheduling a public workshop in Newmarket on what to look for in the fragments, which are likely to be...

A massive fireball that shot over the skies of Northern Ireland on Sunday may finally be explained due to some security cameras that may have captured the event, BBC News reported.People living as far apart as Donegal and Cork reported seeing a shooting star blazing across the skies around 1230 BST."We're fairly certain it was a rock from space which could have landed somewhere in Ireland," said David Moore chairman of Astronomy Ireland.Astronomers and sky watchers are hoping to hear from...

Just before dawn on Oct. 7, 2008, an SUV-sized asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded harmlessly over the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan. Scientists expected the asteroid, called 2008 TC3, had blown to dust in the resulting high-altitude fireball.What happened next excited the scientific community.Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who works at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., joined Muawia Shaddad of the...

Two rare meteorites found in Antarctica two years ago are from a previously unknown, ancient asteroid with an outer layer or crust similar in composition to the crust of Earth's continents, reports a research team primarily composed of geochemists from the University of Maryland.Published in the January 8 issue of the journal Nature, this is the first ever finding of material from an asteroid with a crust like Earth's. The discovery also represents the oldest example of rock with this...