On the Trail of Fireballs: Tracking Meteors and Finding Meteorites

Only eight times in history have scientists found an asteroid, tracked its trajectory toward Earth, and caught the resulting fireball on cameras. The latest of these eight events happened in January 2024, with the discovery of asteroid 2024 BX1, a mere three hours before impacting the atmosphere over Europe. And of course, the SETI Institute's own Dr. Peter Jenniskens was hot on the trail, flying to Germany to help search for meteorite fragments. Within the week, several pieces were discovered, and early analysis found that they belong to a rare group of meteorites called "aubrites". Join communications specialist Beth Johnson as she chats with Dr. Jenniskens about this search, the resulting find and its implications, and prior work hunting for meteorites around the world. Press release: https://www.seti.org/press-release/asteroid-impacted-near-berlin-identified-rare-aubrite