Aust'n researchers forced to hand over rare 1.7 kg meteorite to museum

Australian researchers will be forced to hand over a 1.7-kilogram meteorite, found a fortnight ago, to a museum under Australian law.

The team of Western Australian (WA) researchers from Curtin University made the discovery on Dec. 31 at South Australia's (SA) Lake Eyre.

It was a race against time to find the piece of space debris, with researchers concerned rain would wash away any trace of where the meteorite crashed landed.

After detecting the object on Dec. 27, the Curtin University crew embarked on a three-day retrieval operation which involved a 32-camera network, a light plane, Aboriginal trackers, quad bikes and a drone.

Despite the enormous effort of researchers, they won't be able to keep it. Australian law means the meteorite belongs to the state in which it landed, in this case South Australia.

The provision is outlined in the Museum Act.

The South Australian Museum has already made contact with the group, and the two parties have agreed the meteorite will be added to the museum's collection after the WA researchers have completed researching it.

In return the researchers will be honored with a medallion and potentially an out-of-this-world memento.

"The museum has a little medal, in fact, to give people when meteorites are returned to the museum collection," a spokeswoman told News Corp on Friday.

"Sometimes we even give them a slice of the meteorite to keep in exchange. The Curtin University people ... will have to hand it over to the ... museum, along with any other meteorites they find."

The meteorite is the first find following the instalment of specialized cameras across the Australian outback in WA and SA which monitor meteorite activity.

"We expect to find many more: this is just the first," Planetary geologist Phil Bland, who dug the meteorite out by hand, told News Corp on Friday.

"This is of special significance as the camera observations used to calculate the fall positions have enabled the solar system orbit of the meteorite to be calculated, giving important contextual information for future study." Endit