[meteorite-list] US Air Force Will Continue to Share Fireball Data

[Ron Baalke]

NATURE NEWS: FIREBALL DATA WILL BE AVAILABLE AGAIN

Published online 8 July 2009 | Nature 460, 163 (2009) News in Brief

US Air Force will continue to share meteor data

The United States Air Force says that it will resume sharing data on 
incoming meteors with astronomers. The Air Force collects the data with a 
network of satellites and sensors designed as a missile early warning system. 
For more than a decade, it provided them to astronomers on an ad-hoc basis, 
but the informal relationship came to a halt earlier this year (see Nature 
459, 896-897; 2009). Astronomers feared that the Air Force had put a stop to 
the practice, but "the data will still flow", says Andy Roake, a spokesman 
for Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Air Force is 
developing procedures for releasing data that will be faster, more 
systematic and in compliance with classification procedures. Data sharing 
could resume within the next few months.