Beautiful Aletai meteorite. Iron meteorite - 631 g

The world's largest iron meteorite (74 tons) was discovered in the Aletai prefecture in the Xinjiang Uyghur region in July 2011. The local government took it away under the pretext of “protection.”

A year and a half later, the meteorite discoverers — Hailati Ayisa and Jiaerheng Habudehai, two Kazakh guides — decided to sue the government. Once deposited, it could become the first case concerning the ownership of space objects, Southern Weekly reported. The herders from the pasture where the meteorite was found also claimed its ownership, further complicating matters.

The three parties claimed to be the first discoverers of the iron meteorite. It will not be easy for the judicial authorities to render a correct verdict because Chinese civil law does not follow the theory of “first possession” of property, which states that ownership is justified by whoever claims it before others do.

Hailati comes from Qinghe County, Aletai, the place where China’s largest iron meteorite, the "Silver Camel," was found. He was passionate about meteorites and had befriended the sheep trader Jiaerheng while doing business.

In April 2011, Hailati received a call from another meteorite enthusiast. The man told Hailati that they were looking for a meteorite on an alpine pasture in Aletai and hoped he would be willing to join the search.

A team of nine meteorite enthusiasts then undertook to find the object believed to come from space. Zhang Baolin, an expert on meteorites from the Beijing Planetarium, and meteorite collector Lei Kesi were among them. The search, however, proved unsuccessful. Before the nine men parted ways, they reached a verbal agreement with Hailati and Jiaerheng for them to continue the search.

“Zhang Baolin said we would probably receive a big reward if we found it and informed the government,” Hailati said. Living an ordinary life, Hailati and Jiaerheng viewed the search as an opportunity that could change their fate.

June 17, 2011 proved to be the day they found the meteorite. “It was a gift from the Lord; I thought our lives would be different,” Jiaerheng told Southern Weekly.

They immediately informed the seven remaining meteorite fans, but received no response. However, a few days later they learned from the Beijing Planetarium that the man they had informed had reported the discovery to the Chinese Academy of Sciences as his “first discoverer.”

Beijing Planetarium experts tried to calm them, saying “we know you both found it,” and issued them a certificate shortly after.

On July 16, 2011, the meteorite was officially confirmed as the fourth largest iron meteorite in the world and turned out to be part of the same meteoroid as the “Silver Camel.”

However, the local government removed the iron meteorite from the pasture as soon as possible, declaring that it simply wanted to ensure better protection of the meteorite.

They also denied that Hailati and Jiaerheng were the first discoverers of the iron meteorite, claiming that the secretary of the Aletai Party Sun Jianguo had already spotted it in 2004. But there was no evidence for this assertion. According to Zhang Min, lawyer for Hailati and Jiaerheng, no government had a legal basis to seize or hold meteorites.

As for their reward, the local government agreed to give Hailati and Jiaerheng only 5,000 yuan (800 dollars) each due to “their touching conduct.” Nevertheless, the two men deemed the reward insufficient and opposed the offer.

Meteorite collector Lei Kesi argued that “Beijing Planetarium and I had paid Hailati and Jiaerheng for their help.” He thought they had been employed to assist in the search, so they should not claim ownership. Hailati and Jiaerheng denied this particular relationship but admitted having received a small sum from the Beijing Planetarium during their final search.

Yet, unexpectedly, pasture entrepreneurs Juman and Kenjiebieke Remazan now asserted that they had in fact discovered the iron meteorite as early as 1986 and thus also claimed its ownership.

Under the Chinese land-use bidding system, pasture entrepreneurs can only obtain rights and interests in the pasture itself, and since meteorites are not generated by the pasture, the Remazan brothers should not hold the meteorite, Meng Qinguo, a law professor at Wuhan University, said.

In fact, some scientists had already proposed legalizing government ownership of meteorites eight years ago, but the project had somehow stalled. Meteorite enthusiast Liu Xin told newspapers that finding a meteorite requires a lot of time and money,

“Searchers will be hurt if their hard-to-find meteorites are simply taken by the government.”

“I hope laws can encourage individuals to find more meteorites and benefit both the country and the discoverer,” Liu Xin said.