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The Kunya-Urgench meteorite that exhibited at the Museum of Ethnography and Local History of the Main National Museum of Turkmenistan is always attract the attention of visitors.

On June 20, 1998, a large bolide was observed by people in several villages 7 km south of the city of Kunya-Urgench, Tashauz province, and a loud whistling followed by a crashing noise was heard. A large mass impacted in a cotton field. Scientists who arrived at the site found that the object that fell from heaven is a stony-iron meteorite – the fifth in a row found in the country over the past 40 years and one of the largest meteorites of the 20th century. It had a classic shape – isometric, cone-shaped, with furrows and indentations stand out sharply on the surface that formed as result of hot air while entering the atmosphere.

Before entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the weight of the meteorite was 3 tons; while fall, it partially disrupted. The “outer space guest” is an olivine mineral, consisting mainly of forsterite, feldspar and carbonate. Metal content: iron (up to 30 percent), nickel (5.3 percent) and cobalt (0.1 percent). According to the Committee on Meteorites of the Russian Academy of Sciences, its age is approximately 4.5 billion years, and it is not radioactive.

According to the geologist, PhD in geological and mineralogical sciences Anatoly Grigoryevich Bushmakin, in the process of studying all five meteorites that fell on the territory of Turkmenistan, new data appeared that made it possible to generalize, analyze the collected material, characterize their composition, and identify their common features.

The spectacular fall of the Kunya-Urgench meteorite was observed in the villager of Daryalyk. A large daylight bolide brightened the afternoon sky from the southeast to northwest, and a loud whistling followed by a crashing noise was heard. The force of the impact shaped a crater, 5 meters deep and 6 meters wide. A large mass of the “guest” of 820 kg was excavated from the bottom of the pit.

The central laboratory of the State Corporation “Turkmengeology” was the first to study the meteorite, whose experts scored a composition report of the “outer space guest”. The report said that the meteorite consisted of 10 percent iron, all elements of the periodic table and about a dozen minerals that do not exist on earth at all.

As for previous meteorite findings in Turkmenistan, the first of them was found in 1970 near city of Chardzhou (now Turkmenabad) and was named Kapakly, after a name of nearby village. Around the same time, a 106-gr Akmola meteorite was found in the Darvaza region. The Dengli meteorite weighed 243 gr. The most interesting mineral, the Bahardok, was found several tens of kilometers northward of Geoktepe. It had a weight of some 4 kg. At present time, all these meteorites are in the Committee on Meteorites in Moscow.

Recently, the Kunya-Urgench meteorite, which has been studied for several years, is of great interest to scientists, and many scientific articles have been written about it. Anatoly Bushmakin, as the first researcher of this meteorite, even created a copy-model of the outer space “guest” for the Geology Museum of Makhtumkuli Turkmen State University.

Are meteorites important to scientists? Of course. It is important. The study of meteorites helped us understand the beginnings of our solar system, how planets and asteroids formed and how impacts of large meteorites have altered Earth’s history and life on our planet.

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