New Jersey roof meteorite preserves salty-fluid history from a primitive CM asteroid

A meteorite that struck a house in Hillsborough, New Jersey, preserves material from near the surface of a primitive CM asteroid that experienced concentrated salty fluids, a process not previously known from this type of proto-planet world, ScienceDaily reported of a Science Advances study led by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames. The incoming object was roughly the size of a heavy airline bag and traveled at 32,000 miles per hour (14.4 kilometers per second). Sixty people across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania reported the meteor to the American Meteor Society; sixteen in New York and New Jersey reported feeling the shockwave. Cameras in Northford, Connecticut, and Douglassville, Pennsylvania, plus a doorbell camera in Wayne, New Jersey, traced a path back to low in the asteroid belt, said AMS operations manager Mike Hankey. The fragile rock broke apart and disappeared from view at about 22 miles (35 kilometers) altitude. Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport briefly detected an elongated cloud of falling pebbles from Staten Island into New Jersey; Hillsborough sat near the far end of that path. Only one meteorite was recovered after it struck a house. Journal reference: Meteor over New York City: Brines in a primitive CM asteroid, Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2105.