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Rare Meteorite from Spectacular Fireball Turns out to Be First of Its Kind to fall in the UK

Rare Meteorite from Spectacular Fireball Turns out to Be First of Its Kind to fall in the UK

On February 28, 2021, a bright fireball lit up the sky over the British Isles. The original space was flying at 14 kilometers (9 miles) per second before hitting the Earth’s atmosphere. Thanks to specialized cameras across the UK, researchers were able to trace the meteor from its orbit in all the way it might have hit space – and that is where they found the meteor. Space Rock landed at 21:54 on Sunday 28 February in the town of Winchcombe in the west of England. It is now over by the Natural History Museum in London.

This search is not only provocative as it is the first meteorite to found in the UK in 30 years. This is also a very rare specimen. Of the 65,000 or so-called meteors, only 1,206 have seen falling from the sky. There are only 51 carbonaceous chondrites – and this is one of them. Dr Ashley King, from the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, said in a statement, “From almost all meteor asteroids come to us the building blocks to the left of the solar system that can tell us how Earth-like planets are formed.”

Rare Meteorite from Spectacular Fireball Turns out to Be First of Its Kind to fall in the UK

“The opportunity to be among the first people to see and study a meteorite rescued right after reading is a dream come true!” The Winchcombe meteorite is a great find, and it is a combination of samples collected by the Japanese mission Hayabusa2 and NASA OSIRIS-Rex. The former brought back the valuable commodities of his space rock on December 6 and Mother Nature decided to give us some extra with this meteor. 

“The Japanese space mission Hayabusa2 returned to Earth from a customer Ryugu in December last year with about 4.5 grams of pieces in pieces, and at the museum we are helping to feature this material. Winchcombe’s meteor fall is very time consuming, because the rock is similar to Ryugu in many ways and we can use the space for mission analysis, “explained Professor Sarah Russell, a merit researcher at the museum’s Cosmic Mineralogy.

The location of the meteorite found thanks to the UK Fireball Alliance (UKFL), a project that uses six cameras across the YouTube Kingdom to track where reversals can occur using reassurance. “Three years ago a meteorite fell on Dorset. Then we had good data but no action plan. Therefore, we set up the UKFL and that is the result! Jim Roy of UKFL explained, Jim Roy of UKFL explained, Jim Roy of UKFL explained that each of the six UK meteor camera networks contributed data as these three international teams analyzed the data.