Students from Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network have found a fist-sized meteorite in a remote part of Western Australia’s Goldfields.<\/p>\n
The meteorite was detected the by network’s cameras when it soared across the sky in July this year.<\/p>\n
Modelling showed the meteorite likely landed about 400 kilometres north-east of Kalgoorlie.<\/p>\n
PhD students Michael Frazer, Dale Giancono, and Iona Clemente found the 300-gram rock in November after five days of searching.<\/p>\n
Mr Frazer said the modelling was accurate but finding the meteorite was like finding a needle in a haystack.<\/p>\n
“We were looking for a rock about the size of our fist in a one-and-a-half square kilometre search areas, which is about half the size of Kings Park,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael Frazer, Dale Giancono, and Iona Clemente found the meteorite on the last day of their trip. (Supplied: Michael Frazer)<\/p>\n
The Desert Fireball Network has cameras in desert areas and the Nullarbor to detect meteors entering the atmosphere above WA, covering 3 million square kilometres of sky.<\/p>\n
The network is able to determine the direction a fireball, or meteorite, was travelling and where in the solar system it came from.<\/p>\n
Mr Frazer said the team initially thought the meteorite from July was too small to find.<\/p>\n
But further modelling by their colleagues overseas indicated it might be worth searching for.<\/p>\n
“We were all sort of running around the room going, \u2018We think it’s bigger than we thought it was. Maybe we could go and find this. Let’s let’s plan it. Let’s get out there,'” Mr Frazer said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An image of the meteorite and the moon captured by the observatory at Mundrabilla Station. (Supplied: Desert Fireball Network)<\/p>\n
Road trip to find the rock<\/p>\n
In November Mr Frazer and his colleagues packed their car with food and equipment and commenced on the three-day journey to get to the search area.<\/p>\n
Using a drone with AI technology, they surveyed the area for signs of the meteorite.<\/p>\n
“We sort of used to go out and just walk around and hope we could stumble across the rock, sort of sweeping the area manually,” Mr Frazer said.<\/p>\n
“This drone survey that we do \u2026 spots all sorts of round, small black things on the ground, so a meteorite [could be] one of them.<\/p>\n
“But there’s also gumnuts and spider holes and kangaroo poo, or a wombat nose if the wombat’s looking up towards the drone.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr Frazer says a small fragment seems to have broken off from the meteorite. (Supplied: Michael Frazer)<\/p>\n
The drone detected 728 possible candidates for a meteorite and the team walked to check them.<\/p>\n
After looking at more than 700 of them, Mr Frazer said they were not feeling optimistic.<\/p>\n
“I had finished looking at mine and I said ‘OK, I’m going to head back to camp, this was a fun trip, but we didn’t find it. Oh well,'” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The team appraised some 700 objects before finding the meteorite. (Supplied: Michael Frazer)<\/p>\n
But then a message came through on the radio from his colleague Dale Giancono.<\/p>\n
“We all ran up and there it was sitting on the ground, not where we expected,” Mr Frazer said.<\/p>\n
“There was there was lots of cheering, I think lots of frustration from the past couple of days came out there, but you know, no-one can hear you when you’re out there.”<\/p>\n
Mr Frazer and his colleagues have taken the meteorite back to Curtin University’s Perth campus and hope to chop it up to figure out what it is made of and where it came from.<\/p>\n
“Meteorites come in sort of a few different species, so we want to figure out which one it is,” Mr Frazer said.<\/p>\n
“You can also measure the age, so how long it’s been floating around in space.”<\/p>\n
It is the 11th meteorite with a known orbit to be recovered by the Desert Fireball Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students from Curtin University’s Desert Fireball Network have found a fist-sized meteorite in a remote part of Western…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":444821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4514,4740,204922,204921,204923,16925,17187,50,5270,158780,8632],"class_list":{"0":"post-444820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-central-desert","11":"tag-desert-fireball-network","12":"tag-goldfields","13":"tag-meteor","14":"tag-meteorite","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-outback","17":"tag-regional-wa","18":"tag-wa-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115713317320268784","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}