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Winchcombe meteorite driveway on its way to the Museum
The driveway onto which the Winchcombe meteorite came crashing down in early 2021 has now been recovered.
The section of tarmac, which still distinctly shows the black 'splat' of the space rock, will be joining the meteorite which made the mark at Museum, where an actual chunk of the meteorite which can been seen in The Vault.
What might be the most famous driveway in the UK has now been recovered from the village of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire.
It is the driveway onto which a fragment of the Winchcombe meteorite came to end its 4.6-billion-year journey whizzing through the solar system.
The piece of meteorite which landed here and left behind a black splatter mark was recovered within hours landing. Now, the piece of tarmac from outside the house of the Wilcox family has been carefully removed to preserve this moment of history.
It will be making its way to the Museum where it will join the meteorite.
A section of the meteorite, recovered from a field by Mira Ihasz and a team from the University of Glasgow, is already on display at the Museum and can be seen in The Vault.
A beautiful day in the #Cotswolds. If this was the last day of summer (it's going to rain tomorrow), what a way to spend it! And super success. The #Winchcombe tarmac - with its "Splat!" mark - was lifted with no damage. Expert work by the Grimshaw contractors. pic.twitter.com/p0emEaQuxu
— Jonathan Amos (@BBCAmos) September 8, 2021
A historic discovery
The meteorite made worldwide news when it streaked across the sky in February 2021.
Over 1,000 people reported seeing the fireball blazing over western England. The UK Fireball Alliance tracked its descent using the UK's six meteor and fireball camera networks that watch the skies specifically for these events.
This footage allowed the organisation to predict within 400 metres of where the meteorite was likely to land. But in addition to this, it also meant that the researchers could trace the meteorite backwards to work out where it had come from.
It was a truly historic moment, the first time in three decades that a meteorite has been observed hurtling across the UK and then recovered. Over the subsequent days and weeks, hundreds of grams of the meteorite were retrieved, as scientists from the Museum, the University of Plymouth, the Open University, Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow scoured the countryside picking up any remains they could find.
The meteorite will help scientists understand not only how the rock itself formed as the solar system was starting to form, but also the origin of planets.
