A bright fireball lit up the night sky around Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre South) in South Australia on November 27, 2015.
But how to find the impact site of that meteorite? And how can we know where in the solar system the object came from?
Thankfully, a new meteorite tracking system we’ve installed in Australia has enabled us to answer these questions, helping us better understand the history and composition of our solar system.
Meteorites are the oldest rocks in existence. They contain a unique physical record of the formation and evolution of the solar system, and the processes that led to terrestrial planets.
They sample hundreds of different heavenly bodies, a compositional diversity that spans the entire inner solar system.
But the most basic piece of data – context – is absent. In almost all cases, meteorite researchers have no idea where their samples came from.
What they need are orbits and the ability to track meteorites back to their place of origin in the solar system. The goal of the Desert Fireball Network is to provide that data.
A Network of ‘Eyes’
This is a project that started in 2012 and since then we’ve installed a network of 32 automated observatories in remote areas of Australia. They are capable of operating for 12 months without maintenance, storing all imagery collected over that period.
