Fukang Meteorite: What Is So Special About This Stony-Iron Pallasite?

A rare and expensive meteorite discovered on a mountain in China resembles a stained glass window that was crafted in our early solar system.

An Unusual Find

The valuable material was discovered near the town of Fukang in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in the northwestern part of China. In 2000, a hiker was walking near the Fukang Mountains in China when they stumbled upon something unusual.

The hiker had seen the giant piece of rock on his previous hikes. He had often stopped and had lunch on this massive stone which contained gems and metals that seemed to be poking through.

Out of curiosity, the hiker took a hammer and chisel and chipped some fragments of the rock. Finally, he sent the pieces to the US to have them inspected. It was then that experts had confirmed that the sample sent by the hiker was indeed from a meteorite, known as Fukang Meteorite.

In February 2005, the specimen appeared at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, where it was featured by D.S. Lauretta, the principal investigator of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. The University of Arizona studied the rest of the Fukang Meteorite weighing 2,167 pounds (983 kilograms), excluding the 44 pounds (20 kilograms) removed by the hiker.

Since then, there has been a demand amongst collectors for slices of the Fukang Meteorite. The largest chunk of this space rock, weighing 924.8 pounds (419.5 kilograms), is currently owned by an anonymous collector. In 2008, there was an attempt to sell this fragment at an auction in Bonham's in New York for $2 million.

A fragment of the Fukang Meteorite was recently sold at auction. In February 2021, Christie's auction house announced that it sold an "end wedge of the most beautiful extraterrestrial substance known." Just a small piece of the meteorite fetched a whopping $30,000 for the seller, well over the estimated value of $3,500 - $4,500.

Space Rock With Unknown Origins

The space rock belongs to a type of stony-iron meteorite called Pallasite. It is named after German doctor and naturalist Simon Peter Pallas, who first described the Krasnojarsk Pallasite, which was discovered in Russia in 1772.

Pallasite is identified by the fragments of olivine crystals embedded in an iron-nickel matrix. This class of meteorite is made up of meteoric iron and silicates in an almost equal proportion.

are considered an extremely rare type of meteorite, since most of them do not survive their descent through the atmosphere of the Earth. Scientists estimate that less than 1% of all meteorites are Pallasites. Because of this, the Fukang Meteorite is hailed as one of the greatest meteorite discoveries of the 21st century.

The exact origins of the Fukang Meteorite and other Pallasites remain unknown. Astronomers speculate that they originated from the boundary of a melted and differentiated asteroid and its surrounding olivine mantle.

The Fukang Meteorite is believed to have been formed at the birth of our Solar System about 4.5 billion years ago. During this time, olivine fragments from the mantle of an asteroid mixed with the molten metal from its core as it crashed into the Earth.