From the confines of the galaxy to Normandy, the unexpected route of a meteorite which almost escaped French scientists

It’s a pebble that has made an extraordinary journey: millions of kilometers through the cosmos… to Seine-Maritime. From June 1, 2023, the National Museum of Natural History, in Paris, is inaugurating a new showcase where samples of the meteorites that fell in Normandy last February will be presented.

>> There are all the ingredients of life in meteorites

Initially, there is this asteroid, spotted by an amateur astronomer in Hungary, who warned the European Space Agency (ESA), more than 200,000 kilometers from Earth, “a rocky object that is about a meter in diameter, which wanders through space“, says Brigitte Zanda, specialist in meteorites at the National Museum of Natural History.

She remembers this Monday, February 13, 2023 with emotion: she learns that this one-tonne rock will cross the atmosphere and disintegrate above Normandy. The asteroid, dubbed “2023 CX1,” comes from the inner solar system’s asteroid belt, which contains hundreds of millions of smaller asteroids. When they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, asteroids are called bolides, then their fragments on the ground take the name of meteorites. The last meteorite found on French territory was that of Draveil, in Essonne in 2011.

“The gram can cost several hundred euros”

At the announcement of the news, she immediately jumps into her car. “And the first members of the scientific team of the Fripon/Vigie-ciel program, which monitors the sky with the idea of ​​going to look for meteorites in the field, were on site on Tuesday. From Wednesday at the end of the afternoon, we find the first pebble! It is an art student, volunteer of the project, who finds the first fragment of meteorite“, in Saint-Pierre-le-Viger, she explains.

Problem: the bolide had disintegrated into several pieces when entering the atmosphere, in the probable fall zone, located between Dieppe and Doudeville near the Channel coast. So there are other fragments, and scientists are not the only ones to covet them. “Indeed, there are dealers, collectors who earn their living with this and who, too, will come to the area and will be interested in finding fragments.“, says the expert.

And these “meteorite hunters”, two lucky Americans who find the biggest piece in Fontaine-le-Dun. The dark colored asteroid, weighing 175 grams, was immediately sent to the United States to be cut up and resold. “There is a market for it. In fact, there are collectors who were absolutely delighted to have a piece of an equally exceptional sample, the gram of which can cost several hundred euros.“, specifies Brigitte Zanda.

“The most documented fall in the history of the world”

But fortunately, another collector intervenes: he buys the meteorite to send it back to France and entrust it to the Museum. “He is a collector, a hunter of meteorites, but he is someone for whom the cultural value and the scientific value of the object, the heritage value, is of great importance.“, smiles the specialist today.

Scientists will therefore be able to analyze it and learn a little more about this asteroid from the confines of the universe: “We really have a whole story to piece together. It is truly the most documented fall in the history of the world. In fact, everything that we are going to reconstruct on its trajectory, on its fragmentation, on the physics of what is happening in the atmosphere, it really helps us to better understand what is happening in the atmosphere.“. And for her, these adventures illustrate the need to legislate around the collection of meteorites.