NASA seeks meteorite fragments and photos

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.

Martina Nicolls is the author of Bardot’s Comet (2012).

(www.newscientist.com)

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