Reaching for the stars – LTM 1060/2 from GRÚAS BOVIER SRL hoists meteorites in Argentina

“To be honest, it would never have occurred to us that we would one day be asked to hoist two rocks from outer space,” says Justo Bovier from GRÚAS BOVIER SRL, who still cannot quite believe it. In June, he and his team were working in Paraná with an LTM 1060/2 built in 2006. The job involved hoisting two meteorite fragments from the Antonio Serrano Natural History Museum. “After we had completed the job with our crane, they were taken to the place where they were originally discovered in the northern Argentinian province of Chaco, 1,000 kilometres from our city.”

The two space rocks weighed over two tonnes in total - with one weighing 1,600 kilograms and the other 600 kilograms. To hoist them, the 4-axle crane was set up with twelve tonnes of ballast and the crane boom was extended to a length of 29 metres. A routine hoist in itself, but one that required extensive planning in advance. As the cultural and historical heritage of the province of Entre Rios, the museum is a listed building. The building, including the floors and inner courtyard, could not be modified for hoisting the meteorites: “So our LTM 1060/2 hoisted the fragments from the inner courtyard over the roofs without them having to pass through the various rooms of the museum,” adds Bovier. The work, including safety measures and road closures, took more than two hours.

Exciting job, exciting back story

GRÚAS BOVIER has been specially commissioned by the Chaco provincial government authorities. And the back story of the meteorites is no less exciting than the actual job for GRÚAS BOVIER. Around 4,000 years ago, rocks weighing several tonnes fell to earth and landed in “Campo del Cielo”, in the area of the province of Chaco, whose poetic name translates as Field of the Sky, they caught the attention of scientists and many tourists. And they also attracted the interest of smugglers. They stole the two meteorites to sell them on the black market. The smugglers travelled around 1.100 kilometres with the rocks, but they never made it out of the country. On 23 February 2007, the meteorites were discovered during a traffic control by the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina in the Ceibas area of the province Entre Ríos, who then placed them in the care of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales y Antropológicas “Profesor Antonio Serrano” in Paraná, the provincial capital of Entre Ríos. So, all’s well that ends well, with the two space rocks finally being returned to the place where they were originally found.