On a Friday night in October 1992, a fireball over the eastern US was filmed by fans at high school football games before it punched through the trunk of a teenager’s $400 Chevy Malibu in Peekskill, New York, and she sold the wrecked car for $10,000

On the evening of October 9, 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp was watching TV at her parents’ house in Peekskill, New York. Just before 8 p.m., she heard a crash outside that sounded like several cars colliding.

She went out to the driveway and found her red 1980 Chevy Malibu with a hole through the back of the trunk. Under the car, in a small crater in the driveway, was a rock about the size of a football. It was still warm and smelled of sulfur.

A fireball seen across several states

A few seconds earlier, a brilliant greenish fireball had streaked across the evening sky over the eastern United States. People saw it over Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland as it travelled northeast toward New York.

It wasn’t one solid object for long. As it plunged through the atmosphere, the space rock broke into dozens of fragments, flashing and crackling as it went. Many witnesses said it was the brightest thing they had ever seen in the sky.

Filmed by football fans

The timing was remarkable. It was a Friday night in autumn, which meant high school football games were being played across the region, and many parents had brought camcorders to film their children.

When the fireball appeared, some of them turned their cameras to the sky. At least 14 to 16 separate videos captured it from different locations. Until then, scientists had almost never had video of a meteorite fall, let alone several angles of the same one.

Why the videos mattered to scientists

Because the fireball was filmed from several places, scientists could reconstruct its path through the atmosphere in detail. That allowed them to work backward and calculate the rock’s orbit around the Sun before it hit Earth.

At the time, the Peekskill meteorite was only the fourth recovered meteorite with detailed data on its trajectory. Linking a meteorite to its orbit helps scientists understand where in the solar system these rocks come from, usually the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The rock that hit the Malibu weighed about 12.4 kilograms, or roughly 27 pounds. It is an ordinary chondrite, a common type of stony meteorite, and about 4.4 billion years old. Scientists believe other fragments also reached the ground, but only this one has been found.

A $400 car becomes a collector’s item

At first, local police thought the damage might be vandalism. It soon became clear that Knapp’s car had been hit by a meteorite, and it quickly became famous.

Knapp had bought the Malibu, reportedly from her grandmother, for $400 only weeks earlier. Within days, a meteorite dealer bought the wrecked car for $10,000. She also sold the meteorite itself to collectors for a much larger sum, reported as around $50,000.

The car has since been displayed in museums and exhibitions around the world, including in New York, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. Pieces of the meteorite have been sold to collectors and institutions, and one small slice sold for several thousand dollars at a Christie’s auction in 2021.

How often does this happen?

Space rocks hit Earth’s atmosphere every day, but most are small and burn up completely. Bright fireballs are fairly common, and the American Meteor Society receives thousands of reports of them every year.

Meteorites that survive to the ground are much rarer, and ones that hit buildings or cars are rarer still. Most land in oceans, deserts or remote areas, where no one sees them fall. That’s why a meteorite landing in a driveway, filmed by football fans, became one of the best-known falls in history.

What to do if you see a fireball

If you see an unusually bright meteor, note the time, your location, the direction it travelled and any colors or sounds. You can report it to the American Meteor Society or a similar organization in your country. Reports from many people help scientists work out where any fragments may have landed.

If you think you’ve found a meteorite, keep it dry, avoid handling it more than necessary, and take photos of where you found it. Then contact a local university, museum or geology department. They can tell you whether it’s genuine and whether it may be scientifically important.