Meteorite-hunting drones could help find freshly fallen space rocks

By Will Gater

Meteorites are among the most important objects scientists can study to understand the solar system, but finding them is tricky and time-consuming. Now, one team of researchers is trying to speed up the process with drones.

Robert Citron at the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues have been trialling using drones and machine learning to hunt down meteorites shortly after their blazing journey through the atmosphere.

The NASA-funded study flew a camera-equipped consumer drone over a dried lake bed in Nevada, …