[meteorite-list] NPA 04-25-1970 (Lost City) Meteorite Provided New Information About Space

[MARK BOSTICK]

Paper: Daily Gleaner
City: Kingston, Surrey, Jamaica
Date: Saturday, April 25, 1970
Page: 11

Meteorite provides new information about space

     WASHINGTON, April 24 (AP): Scientists reported that a 35-pound 
meteorite that fell near Lost City, Okla., last January has provided 
valuable new information about space.
     They said it has yielded the firmest evidence yet concerning the 
intensity of cosmic rays far beyond the sun - raising the possibility that 
manned spaceshopes venturing to planets beyond Mars might have to be 
armoured against swarms of high-energy space bullets.
     Come from beyond Mars, the meteorite struck the earth in three pieces, 
the largest about 20 pounds.
     It is estimated to have weighed about 500 pounds originally, and is 
presumed to have been a fragment of an explosive collision between two huge 
objects some six million years ago.  This theory, the scientists said, comes 
from calculations of the object's exposure to cosmic rays.

Accuracy

     The meteorite was found by one of the scientists on a snow-covered road 
outside Lost City on January 10, six days after it reportedly flashed rather 
spectacularly as a fireball streaming down through the winder atmosphere.
     It is the first meteorite in history for which the original orbit in 
space - and trajectory to the earth - has been computed with high accuracy.  
Indeed it is only the second much meteorite for which even an estimated 
orbital and trajectory cmputation has been possible.
     This is so because it is the first to have been photographed in flight 
by a special American meteor-tracking network set up only a few years ago.  
The only other recovered meteorite that was photographed in flight was one 
that fell in Czechoslovakia in 1959, but scientists said this was an 
accidental sighting using cameras designedfor another purpose.  And they 
said that meteorite's pathway to the earth is still uncertain.
     Scientists of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory have calculated 
that the meteorite whissed earthward from an orbit some 65 million miles 
beyond the planet Mars. Dr. Philip J. Cressey of the Goddard Spaceflight 
Centre, Greenbelt, Md., chairman of the session told a newsman:
     "It's a known space probe...we know exactly its trajectory through the 
earth's atmosphere and we have a good orbit on where it came from.  And 
right now, we do not have any earth-launched space probe that has gone 
beyond the orbit of Mars."

(end)


Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
www.meteoritearticles.com