[meteorite-list] Meteorites Recovered in Arizona from June 2 Fireball

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:05:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201606291705.u5TH5bSZ013820_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

https://asunow.asu.edu/20160628-discoveries-tracking-down-arizona-fireball

After 132 hours of searching, ASU team - in partnership with White Mountain
Apaches - locates meteorites on tribal land

Arizona State University
June 28, 2016

On June 2, a chunk of rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle hurtled into
the atmosphere over the desert Southwest at 40,000 miles per hour and
broke apart over the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.

A week later, one of Arizona State University's top meteorite experts
was off on a team expedition in the Arizona wilderness on an Apache homeland,
braving bug bites, bears and mountainous terrain.

After three nights and 132 hours of searching, they were successful.

"This is a really big deal," said Laurence Garvie, research professor
and curator of the Center for Meteorite Studies in the School of Earth
and Space Exploration at ASU. "It was a once-in-a-generation experience."

It began when Garvie woke up on June 2, checked social media and saw that
dozens of people and cameras witnessed a dramatic meteor fall in the wee
hours of the morning. He immediately knew it was going to be a long day.

National Weather Service Doppler radar in Flagstaff swept the area and
turned up three strong radar returns on White Mountain Apache tribal land.

"This thing exploded in the atmosphere," Garvie said. "When the
stone breaks up, things just start dropping. ... By simple physics we
can estimate where these things are on the ground."

A lot of meteorite hunters immediately knew where it had fallen, but tribal
lands are closed to the public, unless hiking or fishing with a permit.
"People were excited, but it wasn't on public land," Garvie said.

A day or so after the fall, after Garvie had stopped being bombarded for
interview requests from the press, he and Jacob Moore, assistant vice
president of tribal relations at ASU, contacted the tribal council of
the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

"(Moore) was absolutely pivotal to this," Garvie said.

With tribal permission granted, the Arizona State University - White Mountain
Apache Tribe Meteorite Expedition, as Garvie dubbed it, took off for the
mountains. Tribal chief ranger Chadwick Amos and Game and Fish director
Josh Parker met the team nearby to help them with their search.

Garvie, two grad students from the Center for Meteorite Studies and three
professional meteorite hunters invited by the center took off in three
high-clearance four-wheel-drive trucks. They brought food and water for
a week in case they got stuck.

Like most backcountry roads in Arizona, it was a hairy two-track.

"We drove 5 miles an hour," Garvie said. They blew a tire (their last
spare) at one point. "We drove a mile an hour after that," he added.
"We took 1.5 hours to travel the 7-mile dirt road to our first campsite."

Everyone was bitten by either cactus or insects. Bears wandered through
camp one night. On the way out, they rescued two lost hikers. Because
the mountains are tinder dry, they couldn't have campfires, so they
ate canned chili, nuts and jerky. One guy put Reddi-Wip on everything.
"It was a real adventure," Garvie said.

The terrain is beautiful, but rugged. You might want to hike to a point
1,000 yards away, but it involves traversing twice that to get there.

After three nights camping and 132 hours of searching, the team found
15 meteorites, ranging in size from a medium-sized strawberry to a pea.
"These are pristine things that were in space a few days ago," Garvie
said.

Searching consisted of walking slowly and scanning small patches of bare
ground where it would be possible to see a small, black, rounded rock,
according to Garvie.

Graduate students from the Center for Meteorite Studies, Prajkta Mane
and Daniel Dunlap, both found meteorites.

Dunlap found one the size of a pea in a clump of grass. "Oh man, I can't
believe this is happening," Dunlap said he thought when he saw it. "Oh
my God, is that one? It is!"

"It was an amazing feeling," he said later.

Mane also found her first meteorite.

"It was crazy," she said. "You study these things in the lab, but
to go into the field with experienced people and find one was really amazing."

It was the third recovered meteorite fall this year in the United States.
The other two were in Mount Blanco, Texas, and Osceola, Florida. All three
finds were enhanced by Doppler radar. Without the Doppler data, the White
Mountain finds would likely not have been recovered, Garvie said.

The three citizen scientists - Robert Ward, Ruben Garcia and Mike Miller,
all well-known to the center - discovered meteorites and handed them
off to the collection. It was a condition of their joining the expedition,
and they gladly accepted, attracted by the thrill of the hunt.

"I really want to stress how important they were," Garvie said.
Received on Wed 29 Jun 2016 01:05:37 PM PDT