Nine-year-old Eli-zé du Toit, saw a dark rock fall from the sky and land near a Wild Fig tree in the garden, on Sunday, the 25th August 2024.
She went to pick it up.
The rock, black and shiny on the outside, with a light grey, concrete-like interior, was still warm when she picked it up.
At around 8:51 am on the same day, residents from the same region, and as far away as the Garden Route, the Karoo, and elsewhere in the Western Cape and the Free State, observed a bright blue-white and orange streak of light in the sky.
Witnesses reported hearing loud explosions and sensing vibrations.
Dr Carla Dodd from Nelson Mandela University (NMU), upon learning of the meteorite’s discovery, quickly secured the sample collected by Elize.
“The Nqweba Meteorite” as it is known, is believed to be an achondritic meteorite, specifically a rare type within the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite (HED) group.
It weighs less than 90g and had a pre-fragmentation diameter of less than 5cm.
Research institutions will now attempt to understand the origin of the meteorite in space, through microscopic and geochemical analysis of the recovered meteorite fragment.
This will be done by a joint team of researchers and astronomers affiliated with the Astronomical Society of South Africa.
They include Rhodes University, Nelson Mandela University (NMU) and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
Dr Deon van Niekerk from Rhodes University, said “it is fitting for Rhodes University, being in the Eastern Cape, to be involved in science regarding such a historic heritage event that’s already touched the lives of so many eyewitnesses in our province.”
He obtained a permit from the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Resources Authority, to recover all fragments from this meteor for scientific analysis.
Another researcher, Professor Roger Gibson from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) said, “our response time was going to be critical if we were going to collect valuable scientific data and meteorite fragments, as well as to explain to the local public that this was a natural event and how the individual parts linked together.”