The Allende meteorite falls over Mexico
On this day · 8 February 1969
A fireball over Chihuahua scattered the most-studied meteorite in history, carrying solids older than the Sun.
Just after 1 a.m. on February 8, 1969, a brilliant fireball lit the skies over the Mexican state of Chihuahua and broke apart, raining stones across one of the largest strewn fields ever mapped near the village of Pueblito de Allende. Searchers eventually gathered more than two tonnes of material.
The timing was uncanny. NASA was months from the Apollo 11 Moon landing and had freshly equipped laboratories ready to analyze extraterrestrial rock. Allende gave them an abundant practice sample, and it has since become the best-studied meteorite in history.
Locked inside are some of the oldest solids ever to form in the solar system.
A carbonaceous chondrite, Allende is studded with calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions dated to roughly 4.567 billion years, condensing from the solar nebula before any planet existed. It even holds presolar grains that predate the Sun, making the meteorite a chemical archive of our system’s first moments.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
