Unlike 99% of all meteorites, this specimen experienced a minimal amount of tumbling during its plunge through our atmosphere. This will only occur when there is a fortuitous distribution of the meteorite’s mass as well as a serendipitous angle of atmospheric entry. As a result of maintaining the same axis of orientation during its descent, such meteorites gain a wonderful aesthetic appearance and their direction of flight is readily discerned. The parabolic face now seen was, in effect, carved by frictional heating as this meteorite rocketed through Earth’s atmosphere. The curvature of this parabola is the precise angle at which heat is most efficiently deflected from any object that penetrates the atmosphere — and this same curvature seen in oriented meteorites inspired the design of the heat shields for NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules.
Found in the expansive NWA 869 strewn field — a massive area from which many meteorites were recovered, including meteorites which are not NWA 869. The NWA 869 shower is among the largest documented meteorite showers of all time. The meteorite is a breccia, a rock composed of many small inclusions that have experienced different degrees of metamorphic heating within its parent asteroid. Some material (type-3 chondrite fragments) largely escaped heating and still retain their primitive textures and compositions; other materials have been extensively heated and recrystallized.