A meteorite that punched through a New Jersey home two years ago is offering a fresh look at some of the oldest material in the solar system.
In a new study published in Science Advances, scientists said the Hillsborough meteorite may have come from a rare, primitive asteroid dating back to the early solar system. The team traced its origin to a class of primitive rocks that preserve some of the oldest materials in the solar system.
Researchers found evidence that the meteorite may have broken off from a parent asteroid rich in ancient salty water. They said that could offer clues about how some of the ingredients for life reached planets like Earth.
On July 16, 2024, a fireball streaked across the skies above New Jersey. The meteorite crashed into the home of an amateur astronomer, who quickly recognized the object and used protective gloves to collect the fragment and place it in aluminum foil and glass containers.
Scientists said that rapid recovery helped preserve delicate minerals and organic compounds in the meteorite that otherwise could have been altered by moisture, weather and contamination. After recovery, scientists also traced its fiery path through the atmosphere to work out where it came from.
“When we have both a documented fireball and a quick recovery of its meteorite, we can learn not only what the rock is made of, but where it came from in the asteroid belt,” Peter Jenniskens, meteor astronomer at both NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and the SETI Institute and lead author of the study, said in a statement.
In the lab, scientists detected a complex suite of amino acids and other organic compounds in the meteorite.
“It’s just more proof that the chemical building blocks of life could have been delivered, and are still being delivered, to Earth today by these carbonaceous asteroid fragments,” Danny Glavin, senior scientist in the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-author of the study, said in a statement.
The team also found unusually high concentrations of sodium, which they said may have been left behind by ancient brines, a high-concentration solution of salt in water. The study said brines alter the rocks they move through and leave behind chemical evidence that remains preserved for years.
Scientists also found the meteorite may have come from the Erigone asteroid family in the inner asteroid belt. That family includes asteroid Donaldjohanson, which NASA’s Lucy mission swooped past in 2025.
The findings are helping scientists study how water altered different asteroids in the solar system, and how water and the chemical ingredients for life may have moved through the solar system.
“If you follow the water through the solar system, you’re actually following life,” Mike Zolensky, a meteorite researcher at NASA Johnson and co-author of the study, said in a statement. “Following the history of water through the solar system is an essential part of understanding the origin of life.”
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