- A South Australian couple's Tesla was hit by a suspected meteorite while driving in Adelaide
- The car's Autopilot kept it driving normally despite the windshield impact and smoke inside
- The windshield glass partially melted, prompting the South Australian Museum to investigate
A South Australian couple claims to have had a miraculous escape after their brand-new Tesla was allegedly hit by a suspected meteorite. According to Science Alert, Andrew Melville-Smith and his wife Jo were driving home from a dealership in Adelaide when their windshield was suddenly struck, filling the car with smoke.Fortunately, the Tesla's Autopilot feature was active, allowing it to continue driving normally despite the impact. According to Melville-Smith, this might have been what saved their lives, as the car carried on as if nothing had happened.
"I thought we'd crashed, it was that loud, it was that violent, it was totally unexpected," Melville-Smith told the ABC. "The car was driving along and unconcerned … it wasn't aware of the chaos that was going on in the cabin."
He recounted that the object struck his windshield with incredible force, causing the glass to soften and melt partially, with cracks radiating outward from the impact point. He reported the incident to the South Australian Museum, which is now investigating to determine the object's origin.
Initially, the museum's mineralogy assistant collection manager Dr. Kieran Meaney considered a meteorite impact extremely unlikely due to the improbable odds of hitting a moving object. However, after examining the impact site, certain features have led him to suspect that this might be a rare exception.
"The really unusual thing is that the glass of his windscreen has actually melted a little bit; there was a lot of heat in whatever hit the windscreen; that's the key thing I can't find a good explanation for. It may be the case once we investigate further, we find out it's something different, but at the moment that's the theory we are working with," Dr Meaney said.
If confirmed, the object could become the first documented case of a meteorite hitting a vehicle in motion. If the samples match meteorite material, the museum will likely search the site for more fragments.
However, experts are also considering other possibilities, such as space debris or an object dropped from an aircraft. Further investigation is needed to determine the object's true origin. Astrophysics Professor Jonti Horner expressed scepticism about the object being a meteorite, citing the lack of reports on fireballs in the sky, which would typically be visible across a wide area minutes before impact. He noted that small meteorite falls are common in Australia and mentioned instances of meteorites hitting parked cars overseas.
About 5,200 tons of space material, mostly microscopic dust, falls to Earth every year, often going unnoticed.
