On July 16, 2024, a daytime fireball over New York City sent a meteorite crashing through a Hillsborough, New Jersey, roof. Scientists now report that the recovered space rock contains hundreds of amino acids—most unknown on Earth—alongside ancient mineral brines.
A Daylight Fireball and a Damaged Roof in Hillsborough
The object that entered Earth’s atmosphere on July 16, 2024, was roughly the size of a heavy airline bag. Traveling at 32,000 miles per hour, or 14.4 kilometers per second, the fragile space rock produced a loud sonic boom as it passed just south of the Statue of Liberty according to a report published in Science Advances.
Sixty people across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania reported seeing the meteor to the American Meteor Society. Cameras in Northford, Connecticut, Douglassville, Pennsylvania, and Wayne, New Jersey, captured its trajectory, which traced back to low in the asteroid belt.
As the fragile rock broke apart during its atmospheric descent, it disappeared at an altitude of 22 miles, or 35 kilometers. Doppler weather radar at Newark Airport briefly detected an elongated cloud of falling debris extending from Staten Island into New Jersey.
Hillsborough sat near the far end of that path.
“I was at home at the time, heard a loud crash and found a hole in the ceiling of the master bedroom. I smelled a strong sulfur-like odor and saw many black fragments along with debris and black dust that covered my bed, carpet and surrounding areas.”
The Hillsborough homeowner, via ScienceDaily
Operating with exceptional care, the homeowner wore disposable gloves, used aluminum foil to collect the scattered meteorite pieces, and sealed them inside glass jars. That quick documentation and protection prevented terrestrial contamination.
An Exceptionally Rare CM1/2 Carbonaceous Chondrite
Laboratory analysis revealed that the recovered rock belongs to a primitive meteorite family known as CM-type carbonaceous chondrites. The designation references the Mighei meteorite, which fell in Ukraine in 1889. Researchers found that parts of the Hillsborough meteorite experienced more extensive water alteration on its parent asteroid than scientists typically observe in standard CM2 material.
Consequently, the meteorite was classified as a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, placing it squarely between the petrographic CM1 and CM2 categories.
This recovery represents the 22nd observed fall involving a CM-type meteorite. Even more remarkably, it is only the second witnessed fall of a CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite, following the Kolang meteorite that fell in North Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2020. No CM1 meteorite fall has ever been observed directly.
Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center served as lead author for the study alongside an international team. Coauthor Mike Zolensky of NASA’s Johnson Space Center joined colleague JangMi Han in identifying small, salt-rich CM1 fragments inside the rock.
Asteroid Brines and Complex Amino Acid Chemistry
The study, titled Meteor over New York City: Brines in a primitive CM asteroid, details microscopic fractures filled with sodium-rich material left behind by ancient brines. These fragile sodium-carbonate salts usually react quickly with Earth’s atmosphere, making their preservation in Hillsborough uniquely valuable.
Similar brine-related salts appear in samples returned from asteroid Ryugu by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission and asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. However, Hillsborough brings that specific chemistry directly into the meteorite class associated with organic delivery to the early Earth.
Water extracts from the meteorite revealed a complex suite of amino acids. According to the reporting, there are hundreds of amino acids in the meteorite and the majority do not occur naturally on Earth.
Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin of the Technical University of Munich noted that a high fraction of the detected compounds appeared to be products of organic chemistry interacting directly with minerals inside a primitive asteroid parent body.
