An iron meteorite weighing 240 kilos was sold at auction on Saturday at the Space Expo Museum in Noordwijk for €1.7 million to an undisclosed American buyer.

The money will go towards a new planetarium for the Mercurius Observatory in Dordrecht and the modernisation of its observatory.

The rock, which had been on show at the Noordwijk museum, hit earth near the Namibian village of Gibeon between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. It is one of many pieces that rained down when a much larger piece of rock broke off from an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter following a collision.

The sale estimate was put at €700,000 to €1,000,000 but “far exceeded our expectations,” Erik Blokland of the Mercurius Observatory, which bought the meteorite for 72,000 guilders (€36,000) in 1998, told the AD.

“The bidding stayed under €300,000 for an awfully long time,” Blokland said. When it reached a million, “we all nearly had a heart attack”, he said.

Blokland said the meteorite would be missed. “We gave it a final hug,” he said.

Meteorites have been selling for large amounts in recent years. An extremely rare meteorite from Mars, the largest ever found at 24.5 kilos, was sold for just over €3.5 million at an auction in New York in July.