On the right is a man-made meteorite. This is a fuel tank from the Russian Salyut 7-Cosmos 1686 (Kosmos 1686) spacecraft assembly, which went out of control and fell to Earth as a fireball, 3 to 4 years earlier than expected.
From the British & Irish Meteorite Society: “Controllers put the spacecraft into a spin and tried to control the impact into the Atlantic Ocean as 70Kg of fuel still remained onboard. This attempt failed and after a bright fireball that was witnessed by many local people, some fragments fell near the town of Capitan Bermudez, 400 Km from Buenos Aires, Argentina at 01:00 local time on 7th February 1991.
The 14 inch diameter, 7.4Kg, mostly titanium sphere is peppered with several hundred perfectly formed craters caused by tiny micrometeoroids which impacted on the surface during its many years in space. Opposing ends have a mounting rod and a coupling/inlet valve respectively – each has ablated heavily during re-entry and streamers of molten material have been blown back onto the leading faces of the sphere, clearly showing the orientation of flight.
Due to its almost perfectly spherical shape and the high melting point of its titanium chemistry, the main body of the sphere escaped complete ablation of it’s surface, thus preserving the many micrometeoroid craters. However, the irregularly shaped mounting rod and the opposing coupling/inlet valve have a thick layer of dark fusion crust with fine flow lines that are similar to the surface of a freshly recovered iron meteorite.
Some of the crater “pits” were undoubtedly caused by other parts of the spacecraft that were ablating in front of the spherical tank during atmospheric passage and also by other man-made orbiting debris from earlier space missions that impacted during its 9+ years in space……fine particulate matter such as paint flecks, booster vapours and even dumped astronauts’ urine”
On the left, is a normal, and heavy iron octahedrite meteorite from Campo del Cielo, Gran Chaco, Argentina.
First reported in 1576, although by then almost 4,000 years old, the Campo del Cielo fall has produced some of the largest meteorites to be found anywhere in the world. Only comparatively recently, however, was a new strewn field for this fall discovered, on higher ground and therefore better protected from water and other oxidants in the earth than the meteorites found on the valley floor. This complete specimen shows no signs of weathering, its finely-textured fusion crust a soft gun-metal gray, highlighted by sharp ridges and some of the distinctive “thumbprint” regmaglypts caused by pressure to the molten metal on its fiery descent to Earth. It measures approximately 12 x 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches and weighs approximately 15.4 kg
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