[InKunming--Yunnan] At 9:45pm on June 1st, 2018, a meteorite suddenly appeared over Mangui village in suburban Jinghong city, Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture of China’s southwestern Yunnan. The meteorite, therefore, was named as Mangui 1 and was collected with the meteorite crater by Shanghai Science and Technology Museum on August 25, marking the first time that a Chinese museum has completely acquired a crater.

On the afternoon of August 25, a press conference was held in Shanghai Planetarium, announcing China’s first time of recovering and collecting meteorite crater and achieving a great value of meteorite research, which means forming a complete information chain including the witness videos, the main meteorite and its crater collected. As a result, the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum has become the first museum in China to recover a meteorite crater.

There were more than 500 pieces of meteorites scattering across Mangui village. The largest mass created a 13-centimeter-long and 25-centimeter-wide crater at N22° 2’ 6”, E100° 10’ 29”.

It is very important for scientific research to retrieve the flight speed and direction of meteorites before they made landfall. According to the museum introduction, the Mangui meteorite and its crater will make next appearance until the Shanghai Planetarium is built.

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(Editors: Christine, Rachel)