2 meteorites returned to Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — After over a year of wooing a German astronomer, a group of Filipino space enthusiasts has successfully brought back two Philippine meteorites they plan to donate to the National Museum for public display and research.

The Philippine Meteorite Repatriation Team on Saturday unveiled specimens Paitan and Pampanga, two of seven local meteorites officially recognized by The Meteoritical Society.

The team obtained the 431.3-gram Paitan main mass and 3.3-gram Pampanga fragment from Dieter Heinlein, a German meteoriticist collecting meteorites and tektites since 1978.

Mar Christian Cruz, one of the team members and a researcher at the National Museum, said they courted Heinlein for 15 months since May 2023 after discovering in an online database that Heinlein had owned Pampanga and Paitan.

“At first, Heinlein refused to hand over the main mass because it is the most valuable part of the meteorite,” Cruz told The STAR during the unveiling ceremony in Pasig. “He said it was difficult to cut the specimen, so he didn’t give us a chance at first.”

“We would explain to him, ‘Sir, we are doing this for the people, the Filipino people. No main mass has ever returned to the Philippines,’” Cruz recalled.

Heinlein acceded in August last year, selling the meteorites at a discounted price.

Cruz cannot disclose how much his team paid, but each gram costs about P12,000 based on market value.

Concerns that the specimens would be damaged if sent home by parcel led Cruz’s team to tap a Swiss collector to pick up the meteorites from Heinlein’s home.

The collector sent the items to the United States, where a friend of one of the team members was waiting.

Their friend flew to the Philippines in December 2024 to deliver to Cruz the package.

The four-member team comprises Cruz; Abe Ambrosio, a pharmacist; Melvin Lang, an architect and Allen Yu, a mechanical engineer.

The unveiling ceremony was held in partnership with the Philippine Astronomical Society, Astronomical League of the Philippines and Manila Street Astronomy.

Pampanga was the first of seven local meteorites discovered by humans, having fallen on April 4, 1859, in a rice field in Mexico, Pampanga.

Paitan, meanwhile, crashed to the ground in May 1910 in San Juan, Ilocos Sur, during the visit of Halley’s Comet, which orbits the sun every 75 years.