More meteorites have been discovered after a tennis ball-sized meteorite hit a residential building in the German town of Elmshorn. A total of about four kilograms of rock were recovered, said Dieter Heinlein, meteorite expert at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the dpa today.
He assumes that the rocks that fell over Elmshorn come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. All known meteorites whose orbits could be calculated could be traced back to this asteroid belt, Heinlein said.
The largest object weighs about 3.5 kilograms. The media had previously reported on the other finds. The finds are now being examined in laboratories in Münster and Dresden.
According to the DLR, meteorite impacts are very rare. When an asteroid hits Earth’s atmosphere, it often breaks up into many small pieces. Some of them burn up, others land on earth. These chunks are called meteorites.
