Chance to buy a piece of the cosmos

10:14am Tuesday 15th July 2008

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VISITORS to Seacombe Spaceport have a chance to hold a piece of the cosmos in the palm of their hands.

The meteorites, which have just gone on sale, are millions of years old and crashed landed in some of the Earth’s most remote locations.

"It’s not often people get the chance to hold a nugget of space. Now they can own one."

Ken Moss

Ken Moss, Spaceport manager, said: “It’s not often people get the chance to hold a nugget of space. Now they can own one. Some of these meteorites are billions of years old – as old as the formation of the planets! “We’ve been working very closely with a guy called David Bryant, one of the largest importers of meteorites in the UK to bring these to Merseyside.

“We want to bring people of all ages closer to space and what better way than giving them the chance to touch a piece of They include fragments from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, which exploded above Vladivostok in eastern Siberia back in February. 1947.

The nickel-iron material once formed the core of a small planet.

Another of the meteorites, NWA 869, is made of stone and landed in the Sahara in North West Africa. It is over 4.6 billion years old and has not altered since the formation of the planets.