Scientists address meteorite theory after object smashes into Tesla windscreen on rural SA highway

Scientists have revealed their findings after a suspected meteorite struck a self-driving car in rural South Australia.

Andrew and Jo Melville-Smith were blasted with glass fragments in the moment of sudden impact while driving home to Whyalla on the Augusta Hwy, after picking up the brand new Tesla from an Adelaide dealership about 9pm on October 19.

Something had struck the windscreen of their car at highspeed near Port Germein.

“It was extremely violent ... I thought we’d crashed. The cabin was full of smoke,” Andrew said at the time.

“I wiped the glass away and saw the car was still driving.”

He said the shock of the impact left him feeling “out of it.”

“If I’d been driving, we would have gone off the road,” he said.

What followed the incident was the unfurling of the mystery behind it — what had hit the windscreen?

Andrew said he ruled out several possibilities before he contacted the South Australian Museum — the only place in the state with the expertise to confirm or deny his theory that the car was struck by a meteorite.

“Whatever it was, it was travelling really fast and was really hot,” Andrew said. “I’ve had a few rocks hit the windscreen in the past but they were nothing like this.”

Museum Minerals and Meteorites Collection Manager Dr Kieran Meaney was skeptical of the meteorite theory from the get go.

“We get a lot of meteorite inquiries at the Museum and most of the time they turn out to be a rock from earth that is doing a very good impersonation of a meteorite,” Meaney said. “So, my initial thought was, nah, there’s no way this is going to be the real deal.”

But certain details on the windscreen prompted a closer look.

“The glass of his windscreen seems to have melted a little bit, and the acrylic layers in the glass have discolouration, almost like they’ve been burnt,” Meaney said at the time.

“It was certainly hit by something and it was something hot, and we don’t have another good explanation for what else it could have been.”

Investigation rules out meteorite

Deeper analysis of the windscreen by the South Australian Museum has now revealed inconclusive findings, but one thing is certain — there is no evidence of meteorite impact.

Meaney told 7NEWS.com.au in a statement on Saturday that what initially appeared to be heat damage, was not actually so.

“The meteorite hypothesis was investigated because there was no clear earthly source of the debris, and the initial reports of the incident indicated that the object was hot enough to melt and deform the glass of the windscreen,” he said.

“Museum research and collections scientists undertook an examination of the windscreen which revealed that this discolouration was not preserved in the glass, and not caused by heat damage.

“No high temperature deformation of the glass could be found preserved in the windscreen.”

The brittle shatter pattern on the glass suggests the object that hit the windscreen was about 2cm in diameter, but no fragments of the object were able to be recovered from the windscreen.

The Australian Space Agency also confirmed it did not detect any objects entering the atmosphere at the time of the incident.

If evidence of a meteorite had been been detected, researchers would have organised a field trip to try and find the object by the roadside near Port Germein, but with the exciting possibility ruled out, so too has further investigation.

“The identity of the object remains a mystery, however the available evidence does not point towards an extraterrestrial source,” Meaney said.

“The South Australian Museum is confident that the damage was not caused by a meteorite.”