New Scientist (April 28, 2012) says that NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, is looking for meteors.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an agency of the United States
government, wants fragments of a meteorite that exploded over northern Canada
and the US state of Nevada on Sunday morning, April 22, 2012.
Meteorites are bits of a
meteor that enters the Earth’s atmosphere and strikes land. Although many
meteors can be seen, meteorites are rare because they tend to burn up in the
atmosphere before they reach Earth, or fragments splash into the sea.
The meteor that exploded over
Canada created a sonic boom, which indicates that it must have remained intact within
16 kilometres from the Earth’s surface. This increases the likelihood that some
of it hit land. Finding fragments of meteorites can provide scientists with
crucial information about their chemical composition and that of the solar
system.
NASA scientists estimate that
the meteorite was the size of a mini-van when it exploded (about 4 metres long and
70 metric tonnes with the energy of 4 kilotonnes of dynamite). If the size
estimate is accurate, this one will be larger than the fragments found in Sudan
in 2008 (the first cosmic impact to be tracked from space to landfall).
Therefore, NASA is interested
to know whether anyone has found fragments or has taken a video of the new
meteor.
(www.newscientist.com)
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