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Scientist Looks For Meteor In San Joaquin Valley

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May 8, 2009 10:08 am US/Pacific

Scientist Looks For Meteor In San Joaquin Valley

WALLACE, Calif. (AP) ― Four months after a green fireball streaked across California skies, a NASA scientist wants property owners in Calaveras and San Joaquin counties to let him search for meteor fragments.

Marc Fries, who studies meteors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, is hoping to perfect a technique that uses weather radar images to track fragments as they fall.

Fries got the idea after talking with his meteorologist brother who said that weather radar picked up pieces of the space shuttle Columbia after it exploded in 2003.

People from Los Angeles to Merced reported seeing the fireball at about 2 a.m. on Dec. 27.

Meteors often disappear after they enter the earth's atmosphere, which makes it difficult to locate the point of impact.

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