Overview

• University of Georgia researchers have classified 23 grams of fragments from the June 26 fireball as a low-metal ordinary chondrite formed about 4.56 billion years ago.
• The team has proposed naming the specimen the McDonough Meteorite and will submit this to the Meteoritical Society’s nomenclature committee.
• UGA will retain a portion of the recovered 50 grams for ongoing study while exhibiting other fragments at the Tellus Science Museum.
• Scientists will publish a detailed paper on the meteorite’s composition and pre-impact speed in the coming months.
• Further analyses will evaluate a developing hypothesis that the meteorite originated in a main-belt breakup event 470 million years ago.