Two researchers from Curtin University managed to find two meteorites in a period of two weeks in the Nullarbor Plain, Australia. The fall of these two meteorites was seen by The Desert Fireball Network (DFN), a network of cameras used to observe shooting stars and predict where meteorites will land in Australia.
The DFN team usually starts the search in March, but gets delayed due to COVID-19. When the lockdown policy was relaxed, they also observed a meteorite fall south of the Eyre Highway near Madura.
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Astronomer Dr. Hadrien Devillepoix and planetary geologist, Dr. Anthony Lagain initially carried out a reconnaissance mission to assess the site of the latest meteorite crash near Madura and took pictures of the area using a drone.
However, walking back to the car, Dr. Devillepoix said that there was a meteorite lying on the ground before their eyes.
“I thought Anthony was joking me by putting down a fake meteorite. However, upon taking a closer look, it was clear evidence that was about the size of a fist. The 1.1 kilometer rock is the meteorite we are looking for, "said Dr. Devillepoix.
Dr. Devillepoix explained that even though the rock was so close to the search position, the team didn't expect to find it so quickly.
"Most meteorites contain metallic iron, much more than Earth's rocks. This is why meteorites usually attract magnets, or make compasses do not work properly," said Dr. Devillepoix.
"However, the meteorite we found didn't interfere with the compass needle. It's really interesting. The next step is to find out why this happened and what makes this meteorite so different from what was previously known," he added.
Not only can they calculate the landing location, the cameras used by researchers can also know where the meteorites came from. "Meteorites are in the orbit of Aten. That means, before falling to Earth, meteorites spend most of their time in the innermost solar system, between Venus and Earth," explained Dr. Devillepoix.
"This type of orbit is unusual because most of the meteorites came from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter," he said.
Two weeks later, Dr. Martin Towner, head of team operations, led six people to search for a meteorite at the site of the meteorite crash in November 2019, to be precise, southwest of Forrest airport, Nullarbor, Australia.
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After searching for four hours, they found a 300 gram meteorite previously seen by DFN on the night of November 18, 2019.
The meteorite originates from a different orbit, pointing towards the center of the main asteroid belt. Currently, the research team is working to unravel what secrets the two stones have.
Researchers can learn more about meteorites on Earth by analyzing data collected by DFN cameras. This camera continuously takes pictures of the sky at night. When more than one camera station detects a fireball, the researchers are notified. They analyzed the data, learned more about the ball and tried to find it.
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