When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.A view of the Hillsborough meteorite. | Credit: SETI InstituteA space rock exploded through a bedroom ceiling in New Jersey, and scientists have now traced its origins to a strange, briny asteroid once visited by a NASA mission.Two years ago on July 16, 2024 in the middle of the afternoon, a sonic boom shook New York City as a fireball streaked through the sky. The culprit? A rock the size of a heavy airline bag weighing roughly 110 pounds (50 kilograms). The meteorite hurtled over the east coast before crash-landing in a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey where the homeowner found it, reeking of sulfur. In studying this meteorite, scientists think that it could have come from the surface of an asteroid where liquid saltwater could have rested, possibly providing clues to life’s origins on Earth.AdvertisementAdvertisement”In a way, you can think of it as smelling the origins of life’s atmosphere,” lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center, told Space.com.Despite its sulfuric stench, in a stroke of absolute luck, this meteorite crashed into the right house. After traveling through our atmosphere and heating up, searing through the sky and then crashing through a roof and then a bedroom ceiling, the meteorite broke apart into pieces. The homeowner not only sprung into action to collect these pieces of space rock into jars, they did so with gloves, protecting the rocks and keeping them remarkably well-preserved.”He had the wherewithal to put on gloves and take out jars,” Jenniskens said. “And for this type of meteorite, carbonaceous chondroits, it’s very important because they just suck in every moisture you can think [of].” So if he would’ve handled the rocks with his bare hands, oils or moisture from his hands could have completely contaminated the rock, which is common in found meteorites. The homeowner also thought to call the American Meteor Society very quickly after recovering the rocks, making these samples unusually pristine.A fragment of the Hillsborough meteorite. | Credit: SETI InstituteOf course, some of the rocks were found to have some fiberglass and even carpet remnants on them after crashing through the roof of a house, Jenniskens said. But the integrity of the meteorites was still incredibly well-preserved for scientific investigation.What did they find in these space rocks?Once the rock fragments were collected, they were brought in for analysis led by co-author Mike Zolensky, a meteoriticist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. And they found the now-dubbed “Hillsborough meteorite” to be full of organic compounds created through chemical reactions with minerals also present in the rock as well as amino acids. They also found that the rock was more altered by water than other meteorites of its kind.AdvertisementAdvertisementThey classified the meteorite as a CM2 carbonaceous chondrite, which are primitive meteorites that formed in the early solar system. But CM2 meteorites typically come from parent asteroids that haven’t been significantly altered by water. Another type of meteorite known as CM1 typically comes from asteroids with water. The Hillsborough meteorite doesn’t fit neatly into either category.Despite being a CM2, they found evidence that its parent asteroid must have had water, leading them to further classify this rock as a CM1/2, a category between 1 …
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