Between Mars and Jupiter, a chaotic no man's land can be found dancing through our solar system. The asteroid belt is rife with relics from the early days of our stellar neighborhood. It is a battleground of asteroids that have slammed against each other, sometimes transforming into new bodies, sometimes destroying each other, and sometimes falling to the Earth.

One such object, at a whopping 326 miles wide, is the 4 Vesta asteroid, the second largest body in the belt.

Vesta is a strange asteroid, almost more like a dwarf planet than your usual space rock, complete with a crust, mantle, and core. Around 6% of all meteorite falls on Earth are come from Vesta, classified as the HED subgroup. Thanks to this prolific amount of material, there is much that can be learned about the massive asteroid. Their unique chemical signatures, filled with residue from the asteroid's volcanic past, tell us much about the storied past of Vesta.

This showcase specimen is a piece of NWA 10262, a Howardite meteorite that was ejected from the 4 Vesta asteroid. It was classified in 2015 after a submission of material to the Meteoritical Bulletin by Mini Museum's Hans Fex.

This rare Vesta showcase material is a one-of-a-kind item and you can explore our entire meteorite collection in the collection below!

The Vesta asteroid is the second largest body in the asteroid belt and the brightest, visible from Earth to the naked eye. In size it is bested only be Ceres, a volcanically-active dwarf planet.

In the first two million years of the Solar System, powerful collisions in outer space between tiny planetoids amassed this enormous asteroid. This explosive beginning can still be seen today by the scars of numerous impacts on Vesta's surface.

With a diameter of 359 miles at its widest point, Vesta is so large it borders on being a dwarf planet, but its irregular shape classifies it as a very large asteroid instead. Its growth was interrupted by Jupiter's formation, the gas giant’s massive gravity well preventing larger bodies from forming and sending the survivors into chaotic orbits.

The unique chemical composition of Vesta has tied it to a number of meteorites that have fallen to Earth. The specimens from Vesta are known as HED meteorites and are divided into three categories: Howardites, Eucrites, and Diogenites. All three are stony achondrites, meaning they lack chondrules, molten nodules formed in the early solar system. 

The three meteorite groups are differentiated by their differing levels of exposure to cosmic rays, suggesting they were dislodged from the Vesta asteroid in three distinct impacts, although the exact timeline is not clear. Some HED meteorites are also sourced from similar asteroids, further complicating classification.

Beginning in 2011, the Vesta asteroid was extensively studied by NASA’s Dawn space probe which also orbited the dwarf planet 1 Ceres, another of the largest bodies in the asteroid belt. This mission marked the first time a probe traveled between multiple astral bodies on a single mission. Among other things, it also confirmed Vesta as the source of HED meteorites, which account for 6% of total falls on Earth.

While scanning Vesta, Dawn studied the massive Rheasilvia and Veneneia basins on the asteroid’s southern pole, formed from the impact with other bodies in the asteroid belt. It was likely that these impacts dislodged much of the Vestoids that have impacted Earth as meteorites

The Dawn mission also unveiled just how similar Vesta is to our own planet. Rather than being a simple hunk of space rock, Vesta has a distinct outer crust, inner mantle and once even an iron core. Traces of this melted iron core can be found on Vesta’s surface in the form of basalts, evidence of a volcanic past.

This particular specimen is from NWA 10262, found in 2015 in one singular meteorite with a mass of 389g. It was submitted for classification to the Meteoritical Bulletin by Hans Fex of Mini Museum and is classified as a Howardite.

Howardites are brecciated mixtures of the rocks found in the other two HED meteorite groups: basalts (also found in Eucrites) and pyroxenites (also found in Diogenites). Because of this unique composite of material, Howardites are the rarest of Vesta meteorites which in total account for 6% of all meteorites that fall to Earth. Each is a relic from our early solar system, a survivor of the chaos of the early solar system.