Car struck by a meteorite in 1992 in Peekskill, on display at the Natural History Museum in Paris. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons.
It is said that she purchased the car shortly before the meteorite strike for about $300. Reports put the meteorite’s sale price at about $69,000 and the Malibu’s at around $10,000. Because it became physical proof of the meteorite strike, the damage also increased the car’s value.
Knapp’s Chevrolet Malibu was already quite a bargain. The meteorite, which had crashed into the car, was found to be an authentic space rock, and soon enough the collectors got interested in acquiring it.
On an October evening in 1992, an 18-year-old New York teenager heard what sounded like a violent crash outside her home. The meteorite was sold for about $69,000, while Michelle Knapp’s damaged Chevrolet Malibu was later sold for $10,000, according to NASA . Together, the meteorite and the car brought in roughly $79,000, turning an inexpensive second-hand vehicle into an unusual collector’s item. Research published in Nature analysed 14 video recordings and calculated the meteorite’s atmospheric trajectory and original orbit. The study found that the object travelled roughly 700 kilometres across the northeastern United States before the surviving fragment reached Peekskill. The American Museum of Natural History still classifies the Peekskill Meteorite as an H6 meteorite that landed in Westchester County, New York, on October 9, 1992.
Because the fall had been witnessed and documented in such detail, it was also scientifically valuable. Because it links the meteorite, the struck car, and the object’s atmospheric journey, the Peekskill fall is unusual. When Michelle Knapp went to investigate, she found that something had pierced the trunk of her parked Chevrolet Malibu and left a small crater in the driveway. Beneath the damaged car was a dark, bowling-ball-sized rock that was still warm. It was not an ordinary stone. It had travelled through space before crashing into her car, and within days, both the meteorite and the battered vehicle had become valuable collector’s items. The fireball’s journey was reconstructed by researchers using recordings from that night. The car’s value was no longer tied only to its age and condition. Scientists could compare the videos with the actual rock rather than study a meteorite with no recorded fall history. In NASA’s technical literature, Peekskill is described as the first meteorite fall filmed by non-scientists. The story of the meteorite was not over after its sale. Parts of the original rock found their way into museums and scientific institutions, providing scientists and visitors the chance to view samples of something that came straight from outer space. It is a meteorite that fell from space and struck a Malibu car. There are very few cases of meteorites having a recorded history that tells of their origin, impact site, and target. In this case, the target was an old Chevy owned by a teenager.
