A news announcement shared on Facebook, the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum is offering a $25,000 reward to the first person to recover at least one kilogram of a space rock that landed across the state.
The museum, which is situated in Bethel, also claims that it will purchase any additional specimens found and that such space chunks may easily be worth their weight in gold.
The Meteorite’s Probably Location
The radar identified the fireball, which was visible in broad daylight and caused a sonic boom, allowing NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Lab to compute the strewn field — where parts of the meteor would be recovered — near Calais, Maine.
Darryl Pitt, the meteorite division head of the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum, said he was eager to investigate any shards of the meteorite that might hold vital information about the solar system.
The first meteorite chunk weighing 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) or more will receive a $25,000 reward.
However, he stated that the museum would be willing to pay for any specimen regardless of size.
According to Pitt, approximately eight to ten meteorites are found worldwide each year, out of hundreds witnessed falling to Earth.
A meteorite that landed on a driveway in the United Kingdom in 2021 turned out to be an exceedingly uncommon sort of space rock and is now housed in London’s Natural History Museum.
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Maine Meteorite Spotted for over Four Minutes
From roughly 11.57 am, the Maine meteorite was visible for more than four minutes.
NASA predicts that the sun will rise at 6 a.m. ET on Saturday, April 8. Winds could have pushed smaller meteorites across the border into Canada, according to the agency.
Pitt stated that a meteorite would stand out from the surrounding rocks.
The outside would be blackened from being burnt by fire as it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, but the inside would have a different color. It could possibly include iron and hence attract a magnet.
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