AN ORIENTED IRON METEORITE — AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL ANTIQUITY

Unlike 99% of all meteorites, this specimen experienced a minimal amount of tumbling during its fiery plunge through our atmosphere. It maintained the same axis of orientation during its descent earthward—except for having flipped, such that both ends have been contoured by frictional heating. Oriented meteorites were extensively studied by rocket scientists, inspiring the atmospheric reentry technology of nuclear weapons and, later, the heat shield design for the first manned space capsules. The parabola seen here is the angle at which heat is most efficiently deflected away from a falling body and was emulated in the heat shield design of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules. X-ray fluorescence analysis proves this is a meteorite as does the faint crystalline pattern seen—a feature that is diagnostic in the identification of an iron meteorite, and an uncommon occurrence on a meteorite’s external surface. This extraordinary, and indeed extraterrestrial, object bears a semblance to a polished axe heads or Bactrian ritual stone objects from antiquity.

Christie's would like to thank Dr. Alan E. Rubin at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles for his assistance in preparing this catalogue note.