The underwater hunt for the rare stones was hampered by coldweather and light-obstructing mud stirred up from the bottom. Thedivers used powerful lights and probes to uncover several potentialsites where meteorite fragments may have landed.
On Thursday, a team from Ekaterinburg will join in the search byconducting a magnetic survey of the prospect locations; the initialresults could be ready as early as that evening.
Some fragments of the meteorite were retrieved in theChelyabinsk region, which endured the bulk of the spectacularcosmic event. The biggest meteorite chunk discovered was about 1kilogram. It is hoped that the fragments inside the lake could bemuch bigger, weighing dozens of kilograms.
Videos of the meteorite streaking across Russia’s sky proved tobe not only awe-inspiring for YouTube, but also served a scientificpurpose: Two groups of researchers used the clips to calculate themeteorite’s trajectory.
Colombian astronomers from the University of Antioquia in Medellinare believed to be the first to report their preliminary resultslast week at the scientific publishing website arxiv.org. A similarwork by researchers at the Astronomical Institute of Czech Academyof Sciences came days later on Monday.
Both teams used the proven method of analyzing video footage ofthe meteorite’s descent through a little bit of trigonometry. Thistime, however, the footage was taken by CCTV, car cameras andsmartphones, rather than precisely calibrated observatoryrecorders.
The Russian meteorite was determined to be an Apollo-classasteroid, one of an estimated 5,000 near-Earth bodies orbiting theSun and occasionally crossing the Earth’s orbit. Most of theseobjects are spread out between the orbits of Venus andJupiter.
Russian astronomers will report their findings later in March,but have already confirmed that the results published by theColumbian and Czech researchers correspond with their findings.
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