About 5 kilograms of meteorite fragments were found at the crash site of a space fireball in the Lipetsk region at the end of June, scientific director of the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Shustov told RIA Novosti.
On the morning of June 21, residents of the Voronezh, Lipetsk, Oryol, Tula and Kursk regions watched and filmed a meteor falling in the atmosphere. At the end of the car's flight, a powerful flash was recorded - it exploded before reaching the Earth's surface.
“According to preliminary estimates, about 5 kilograms of meteorite matter was found, and most of it was collected by local residents,” Shustov said.
According to him, the event was of great scientific interest, so the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, together with the Institute of Dynamics of Geospheres of the Russian Academy of Sciences, organized an expedition to the area of the meteorite fall from June 27 to 30. The meteorite substance was found jointly by employees of the Ural Federal University, the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, the Institute of Astronomy and amateurs.
“As a result of the work of the expedition, data was collected that will help determine various parameters of both the celestial alien itself and its orbit. A preliminary estimate of the size of a body that exploded, or rather disintegrated, in the atmosphere at an altitude of several tens of kilometers is about one or two meters,”said Shustov. According to him, some of the fragments collected by local residents will end up in the local museum of local lore, but most of them will settle in private collections.
It has been established that the meteorite that fell to the ground belongs to stone meteorites - chondrites. “It was burnt when falling through the atmosphere and is black, but inside it is gray with 'grains' - chondrules. Chondrules are millimeter-sized droplets of frozen olivine melt. Their education is one of the main scientific mysteries, which are aimed at solving the efforts of scientists dealing with the problem of the origin and early evolution of the solar system”- said the scientist.