Discovery of the Hoba meteorite

The Hoba meteorite lies in northern Namibia, near the town of Grootfontein, where it is still found at the spot where it landed. It is the largest known intact meteorite and the heaviest naturally occurring piece of iron known at the surface of the Earth, weighing around sixty tonnes. It is made of about eighty per cent iron and most of the rest nickel, and has a flat, slab-like shape of roughly three metres across. Unusually, it left no crater, probably because its fall was slowed by the atmosphere. It was declared a national monument and is now a tourist site, with an enclosure to protect it from souvenir hunters.

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