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| The New Orleans Meteorite Fall - of September, 2003 by: William Simmons, Alexander Falster, Robert McDade, New Orleans, Louisiana See complete research data  On Tuesday, September 23, 2003 at about 4:00 pm, a large stony meteorite fell in the uptown area of New Orleans, Louisiana. A single stone ripped through the roof of a house belonging to Roy Fausset. When Mr. Fausset returned home from work, he knew something was very wrong. "The powder room door was open and it looked like an artillery shell had hit the room," he said. Not only was there a basketball-size hole in the roof, but the meteorite had smashed through the ceiling of his daughter's second-floor room demolishing an antique wicker desk and chair before cutting a neat hole in the wall-to-wall carpet and the flooring beneath it. It slammed through the downstairs bathroom, just missing the toilet and crashed through the bottom floor of the house into the ground beneath his home, where it shattered into many pieces. The weight of the meteorite is estimated to be about 20 kilograms. Incredibly, no one heard or s aw the meteorite as it entered the atmosphere. On the following week Robert McDade, who is a meteorite collector and owner of a mineral museum in New Orleans, contacted me. Robert informed me that he had found some fragments of the meteorite in the blocks around the impact site. I told him that we could analyze the material and make a preliminary classification of the meteorite.Students take to the field We decided that this was an opportunity for the mineralogy class at the University of New Orleans to participate in collecting and researching the meteorite. The following Thursday the whole mineralogy class spent the afternoon searching for fragments in and around the impact site. All of the students found at least one small fragment. In all more than 50 grams of fragments were collected. Samples were examined by SEM and analyzed by electron microprobe back at the University. |
| Full laboratory details For more details, analytical results and more images, see our complete write up at the MP2 Research Group Web Site. |  a fragment recovered by UNO students © Alexander Falster, 2003 |
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