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A camp during a previous meteorite search in the central Nullarbor, Australia
This October, meteorite researcher Gretchen Benedix and meteorite curator Caroline Smith will take part in a meteorite collecting trip to the Nullarbor Desert in western Australia.
The Nullarbor is home to the Desert Fireball Network, a small network of cameras that have been set up to observe meteorite fireballs and calculate where they fall. A meteorite find will be very important. Less than ten of the 32,000 or so known meteorites have their falls recorded by camera or video. If the fireball associated with a meteorite's fall to Earth can be recorded, it's then possible to work out its orbit and where it came from in the asteroid belt.
It's also important to recover freshly fallen meteorites as quickly as possible because they start to pick up contamination and begin to degrade as soon as they land.
Camera in the Nullarbor at night © Phil Bland
As well as hunting for meteorites, Gretchen and Caroline will be checking that the cameras of the Desert Fireball Network are working correctly and fixing any problems that may be found.
Gretchen and Caroline set off for the desert on 1 October with colleagues from Imperial College, London and the Western Australian Museum, Perth.
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