The stone on the driveway
The true story of a space rock that landed in a small English town in 2021.
On the evening of 28 February 2021, a very bright light raced across the sky over Britain. It was a fireball, a big shooting star. Thousands of people saw it, and lots of cameras filmed it.
Scientists looked at the films. They worked out where any pieces might have landed: near Winchcombe, a small town in Gloucestershire.
That night, a family in Winchcombe heard a rattle outside. The next morning they found black, crumbly bits of stone on their driveway. They had heard about the fireball, so they told the scientists.
The stone was a meteorite! It had come from an asteroid, far out in space. More pieces were found later, including one in a sheep field.
The Winchcombe meteorite is a rare kind of space rock. It contains water locked inside its minerals, and tiny amounts of the chemicals that living things are made from. Scientists are still studying it to learn how planets like Earth got their water.
Today some of it is kept at the Natural History Museum in London.
Winchcombe was the first meteorite in 30 years to be seen falling in the United Kingdom and then picked up.