Here is a story from USA Today about a recent meteorite over Mississippi (pieces found on the ground so it IS a meteorite) with info supplied to USA Today by YORF’s own Bill Cooke of NASA (Marshall in Alabama as I recall).

Story link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...und/9645384002/

Maybe Bill will chime in and provide any additional details, if there are any of additional interest. I have always wanted to find a meteorite but never have.

Earl

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Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
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Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

It was a fairly unusual event - despite being visible in clear morning skies, more folks reported hearing the pressure wave than seeing the fireball. Also a very strong signal in the Geostationary Lightning Mappers on GOES 16 and 17.

We have been working it a bit more over the past few days. The trajectories reported by USA Today are the initial two, both based solely on eyewitness accounts. As you might guess, those trajectories are very crude - a lot of people don't know north from south, and practically everyone sucks at estimating elevation above the horizon. So we spent some time in internet/social media searches and managed to locate four videos, two of which had the entire fireball path, making them suitable to constrain the start and end locations of the trajectory. The other two had the end of the event, providing additional constraints on the end location. We also had the data points from the lightning mappers to help make sure we were in the ball park (see first attachment - green lines are start azimuths from the cameras, red are the end azimuths, and the magenta dots are the satellite positions. The blue blocks are the Doppler radar sweeps (2 km altitude) showing the meteorites falling to the ground).

The next attachment shows the best trajectory we have from this data. We have used it to compute the meteor's pre-impact orbit, which is typical low inclination asteroidal (3rd attachment). The meteor was even slower than we initially guessed, coming at us from just inside our orbit.

Attached Thumbnails

     

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At least 8 meteorites have been found under the doppler signature shown in the above post. I am attaching pictures of two of them, one weighing 41 grams and the other at 37 grams. These appear to be ordinary chondrites - the most common type of meteorite - and fetch anywhere from $3-$10 per gram on the meteorite market.

Attached Thumbnails

   

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And finally the fireball signatures on the Geostationary Lightning Mappers. The first image is from GOES 16 and the second is from GOES 17.

Bet you're sorry you asked for more info, Earl

Attached Thumbnails

   

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Under construction:
Under repair:
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TRA #19705
SAM #0001
Huntsville, AL

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Oh, to the contrary! Thanks much for giving us some background on the details that go in to tracking trajectories for these things. I figured there might be a decent backstory to that process and was hoping you could give us some details.

Thanks much!

P.S. -- Have you ever found a meteorite yourself?

Earl

__________________
Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

Nope - too old and lazy to go tramping through the wilds

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Up next:
Under construction:
Under repair:
In finishing: Centuri Sabre clone
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Bill Cooke
NAR #31312
TRA #19705
SAM #0001
Huntsville, AL

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So, about how many 'suspected' meteorites does you/your group attempt to investigate (much like this recent one) in a given year? Is it many multiple or something that happens rather infrequently?

Earl

__________________
Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970

About 5-8 per year in the United States. We are involved with all of them to various degrees.

__________________
Up next:
Under construction:
Under repair:
In finishing: Centuri Sabre clone
In primer:
In paint:
Ready for decals:

Bill Cooke
NAR #31312
TRA #19705
SAM #0001
Huntsville, AL

My rocket blog
My rocket fleet