Possible Meteorite Strikes Tesla Windshield in South Australia — Could Be a World First

Object Smashes Tesla Windscreen on South Australian Highway — Investigators Consider Meteorite

An object struck a Tesla's windscreen while the car was travelling near Whyalla in South Australia, leaving a spiderweb of cracks and what the owner described as partial melting of the glass. The vehicle's owner, veterinarian Andrew Melville-Smith, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the impact was so violent he initially thought the car had crashed.

'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.'

The Tesla was reportedly operating in Autopilot mode at the time and continued to drive normally after the impact. Melville-Smith reported the incident and provided the location to the South Australian Museum, which has launched an investigation to determine the object's origin.

Why scientists are interested

Material from space continuously reaches Earth — roughly 5,200 tonnes per year — but most of it is microscopic dust. Larger fragments that survive atmospheric entry are much rarer, and documented cases of meteorites striking people or vehicles are extremely uncommon. If tests confirm an extraterrestrial origin, this event could be the first recorded instance of a meteorite striking a moving vehicle.

Mineralogist Kieran Meaney of the South Australian Museum told the ABC that the windscreen shows signs of localised melting, which suggests a lot of heat accompanied the impact. The museum's initial step is to examine the glass for any embedded particles; if laboratory analyses point to a space origin, teams will return to the site to search for the rock itself.

Other possible explanations

Scientists caution that alternative explanations remain plausible: re-entering space debris, material fallen from an aircraft, or even a terrestrial rock ejected by another process could produce similar damage. Meteorites are often cold inside when they land because the outer layers ablate in the atmosphere, but a very fast-moving object can convert kinetic energy into intense heat on impact, causing localised melting.

'It may be the case once we investigate further, we find out it's something different, but at the moment [a meteorite is] the theory we are working with,' Meaney said. 'If we do find out that it is a meteorite, we will probably end up going out to where this happened and trying to find the bit of rock.'

The investigation is ongoing. Laboratory results and any recovered fragments will be key to determining whether this remarkable event really represents a world first.