Rupota

Seen to fall in 1949 in Tanzania · 6 kg recovered · L4-6

Rupota is the heaviest of the eight falls recorded in Tanzania. It is the only fall in NASA’s Meteorite Landings dataset (records to 2013) classed L4-6.

Group: L chondrites
Recorded position: 10.267° S, 38.767° E

The map is centred on Rupota. Rings every 200 km; numbers match the table below.

Nearest recorded falls

The closest recorded fall to Rupota is Peramiho, 360 km to the west. No other fall in the record lies within 250 km of Rupota.

#	Fall	Year	Class	Recovered	Distance
1	Peramiho	1899	Eucrite-mmict	165 g	360 km west
2	Ishinga	1954	H	1.3 kg	564 km west
3	Chisenga	1988	Iron, IIIAB	3.9 kg	588 km west
4	Mtola	1944	Unclassified stone	1.1 kg	591 km west
5	Dowa	1976	Unclassified stone	642 g	649 km south-west
6	Zomba	1899	L6	7.5 kg	664 km south-west

What L4-6 means

L4-6 is the label for an ordinary chondrite with low total iron, a breccia or mix spanning petrologic types 4 to 6.

Grey ticks: all 1,063 falls. Dark ticks: the 373 falls in the group l chondrites.

Rupota in Tanzania’s record

In date order Rupota is number 4 of the 8 falls recorded in Tanzania, which run from 1899 to 1988. The fall recorded before Rupota in Tanzania is Ivuna (1938); the next is Ishinga (1954).

Bigger dots carry more recovered mass.

The 1940s

Rupota is one of 55 falls dated to the 1940s. Elsewhere, the record lists 11 other falls in 1949, among them Kunashak in Russia, Benton in Canada, Mezel in France.