A space rock that streaked across the sky last week before crashing close to the Canadian border is being offered for sale by a museum in Maine for $25,000.
Head of the meteorite division at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum, Darryl Pitt, expressed interest in studying any meteorite fragments that may hold important knowledge about the solar system.
The first discovered meteorite fragment weighing 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) or more is eligible for a $25,000 reward. He did, however, add that the museum would buy any specimen, “regardless of its size.”
A space rock that streaked across the sky last week before crashing close to the Canadian border is being offered for sale by a museum in Maine for $25,000.
Radar picked up the fireball, which was visible in broad daylight and produced a sonic boom. As a result, NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Lab was able to determine the approximate location of the meteor’s possible debris field near Calais, Maine. “discovering meteorites in Maine’s forests. It’s not the most straightforward environment, “said Pitt.
The area is sparsely populated, but not as sparsely as the ocean, where most meteorites fall, he continued.
Out of the hundreds seen falling to Earth each year, only eight to ten meteorites are recovered globally, according to Pitt. An extremely rare type of space rock was discovered in a meteorite that fell on a driveway in the UK in 2021; it is now housed in the Natural History Museum in London.
According to NASA, the Maine meteorite was visible for more than four minutes starting at 11:57 a.m. ET on Saturday, April 8.
The agency speculated that winds may have carried smaller meteorites into Canada from across the border. “It was a significant event,” Pitt said, “for the light (of the fireball) to overwhelm the brightness of the day.”
A meteorite would appear different from the nearby rocks, according to Pitt. The inside would probably be a different colour, while the outside would probably be blackened after being toasted by the heat as it fell through Earth’s atmosphere. It might also contain iron, making it magnetically attractive. Before, the museum offered a reward for a meteorite.
Pitt claimed that efforts to find fragments of a Meteorite that lit up the sky over the area in 2016 were unsuccessful. Because more specific information is now available from radar data and he anticipates a “robust response” from meteorite hunters, Pitt said he was “guardedly optimistic” this time.