Housing rare gems, GSI launches National Meteorite Repository at Kolkata HQ

kolkata: The Geological Survey of India (GSI) has launched a state-of-the-art National Meteorite Repository at its central headquarters here.

This newly-constructed Meteorite Gallery represents a significant advancement in the preservation and exhibition of meteorites in India, offering modern infrastructure and enhanced facilities to showcase these extraordinary specimens from space.

Asit Saha, director general, GSI, while inaugurating the gallery, emphasised the repository’s role in enhancing India’s understanding of planetary science and space exploration. He noted that the collection of hundreds of meteorites from across the globe housed here provides invaluable data on the early solar system’s formation and the earth’s geological history. The National Meteorite Repository houses a rare and diverse collection of 643 meteorites from around the world, meticulously curated within the Meteorite and Planetary Science Division (MPSD) under Mission-IV, Kolkata. The gallery exhibits a wide variety of meteorite types, from ordinary chondrites and carbonaceous chondrites to achondrites, including a Martian meteorite known as Shergotty and iron meteorites. Among this remarkable collection, 119 specimens are from meteorite falls and finds across India.

The oldest meteorite in the collection is Ensisheim, an ordinary chondrite that fell in Alsace, France, on November 7, 1492 while the recent addition is the Kopargaon meteorite, an iron chondrite that fell in Maharashtra on January 24, 2023. The oldest Indian meteorite in the collection is the Krakhut meteorite, an ordinary chondrite that fell 14 miles from Benares (Varanasi) on December 19, 1798.