A meteorite that crashed into a driveway in Winchcombe, England, became contaminated with a sprinkling of table salt within hours of landing, dashing hopes that it could be a “pristine” example of a primitive type of space rock.

The Winchcombe meteorite, which fragmented and fell onto the Gloucestershire driveway and a nearby sheep field in February 2021, was recovered and stored in sealed bags very soon after it landed — within hours for the fragment found on the driveway and within days for the rubble in the sheep field. But even so, new research finds, the meteorite had already begun to change due to its interactions with Earth’s atmosphere and surface.

“The Winchcombe meteorite is often described as a ‘pristine’ example of a CM chondrite meteorite, and it’s already yielded remarkable insights,” study lead author Laura Jenkins(opens in new tab), a doctoral student in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow, said in a statement(opens in new tab). (CM chondrites are a subgroup of carbon-rich carbonaceous chondrites, meteorites that carry some of the oldest minerals in the solar system.)

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