Space rocks seen making deep impact in auction

By: 3 years ago

This meteorite from Mars is up for auction at Christie’s. (Photo from a Reuters video)

NEW YORK — Meteorites are striking gold among collectors, with a dilapidated dog house that survived a hit from outer space expected to fetch up to $300,000 at a Christie’s auction, and a chunk of Mars going for as much as $800,000.

Bids are soaring for lots in “Deep Impact: Martian, Lunar and other Rare Meteorites” at a time when space is the limit, with the launch of SpaceX, the world’s first all-private space crew, and “Don’t Look Up,” the Oscar-nominated film about a comet speeding toward Earth.

The online-only sale of 66 lots ending on Wednesday includes “meteorites containing the oldest matter humankind can touch,” Christie’s said in a statement.

Items include “rocks that have been jettisoned by larger meteorite impacts on the moon or on Mars,” astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson said in an interview. “These rocks escaped, those bodies wandered through space, some of which landed here on Earth.”

The top price is expected to go to the third-largest Mars rock on Earth. But the quirkiest item up for grabs since the auction opened on Feb. 9 is a doghouse.

The kennel’s resident Roky, a German Shepard, was inside and narrowly escaped when a meteorite crashed through the tin roof in April 2019 in Aguas Zarcas, Costa Rica.

“A seven-inch hole marks where the meteorite punctured the roof,” Christie’s said in the treasure’s description.

“He was almost nailed by a meteorite. Gratefully, that was not the case,” said Darryl Pitt, curator of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, a consultant for the auction.

A meteor-struck cow in Venezuela in 1972 was not so fortunate. Its remains were butchered by a farmer and eaten.

So far, humans have been spared. And, while fiery crashing meteorites may be terrifying, they actually are commodities in an industry known as the meteorite trade, Tyson said.

“You might go your whole life without ever touching a meteorite, but there are people who have devoted their entire careers to finding them in the wild, and they often go up for sale either to merchants or at an auction,” Tyson said.