Dronino meteorite

The meteorite Dronino is a nickel - iron meteorite, which was found in April 2000 in Ryazan Oblast south of Moscow.

The history of its discovery and identification as a meteorite is quite strange: On the way home from picking mushrooms came Oleg Nikolayevich Guskov from Moscow on a rusty piece of iron sticking out of the ground at the edge of the forest. He tried to dig up the metal with a pocket knife, but this did not succeed. Since he suspected that it might be a meteorite, he returned with a shovel and wheelbarrow back, dug the found object and brought it home. The meteorite he had only now than two years are in his garden. The meteorite fell apart during this period into three parts. One of the parts disassembled Guskov further means of a saw, with his suspicion that there must be an extraterrestrial body hardened. He then went on the search for experts and finally got one of the slices in a Moscow laboratory.

This showed that it was a meteorite with a high nickel content. Due to its nature, the meteorite must be shattered, so that further fragments had to be present when entering the Earth's atmosphere.

An expedition eventually found more than 250 fragments with a total weight of 0.5 tons. The original mass of the meteorite is estimated to be about 1.5 tons. The fall of the meteorite should be certainly been a spectacular event. However, since no traditions here on are present, it is assumed that the impact before the year 1200 AD took place. Only after this time settlements had arisen in the area of the locality.

The Dronino meteorite comes from the asteroid belt and is classified as Ataxit, a rare group of iron meteorites with high nickel content.

Chemical composition: about 83% iron; 17% nickel; trace elements