Could a meteorite be made of gold?
No meteorite is made of gold. Some contain tiny traces of gold and platinum, but they are mostly rock, iron and nickel.
It would be wonderful to find a lump of gold from space, but meteorites are not made of gold.
Most meteorites are made of stony minerals, such as olivine and pyroxene, and many contain metal made mostly of iron with some nickel. Iron meteorites are almost all iron-nickel metal. They shine like silver when cut and polished, not gold.
However, meteorites do contain tiny amounts of precious metals like gold, platinum and iridium. These are called 'iron-loving' metals, because they like to mix with iron. In iron meteorites, there may be a few grams of platinum-group metals in every tonne of metal, far too little to see or use. Earth has these metals too, but most of Earth's supply sank into its iron core long ago.
Some bronze-coloured grains in meteorites can look golden. These are usually a mineral called troilite, made of iron and sulfur. It is related to pyrite, which is sometimes called fool's gold.
In the future, people may try to mine metal-rich asteroids for precious metals. NASA's Psyche spacecraft is on its way to study a large asteroid that seems to be rich in metal, arriving in 2029. It will help us learn what such asteroids are really made of.