Collecting Objects That Fell to Earth from Outer Space — Use a Net

How does one catch a rock that plummets to earth from outer space?

Scott Sandford, a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, is seen in the photo below (he is at the left) with the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule immediately after it landed in Utah on September 24, 2023. This was the first sample ever deliberately collected from an asteroid and brought to earth. Sandford was working without a net — in contrast to a method he favored on a much earlier expedition to collect a passively fallen — and eventually extremely famous — rock sample.

Sandford has a long history of retrieving and analyzing objects that have fallen to earth from space. He was one of the scientists who retrieved the Martian meteorite that entranced earth’s scientists and public many years ago — the meteorite appeared to contain evidence that the planet Mars had once hosted life. That piece of rock, known as “Allan Hills 84001”, was gathered in 1984.

Sandford and colleague Randy L. Korotev wrote a fanciful account of the retrieval method, which he published in 1996 in the Annals of Improbable Research, with the title “To Catch a Falling Star”. The key passage: “When an incoming object was sighted, its most likely impact point with the ground was calculated from its aerial trajectory using standard ‘outfielder’ techniques.  Once an impact site was determined, an expedition member was dispatched to the landing site to ensure immediate collection (Figure 3).”

A snippet of that article is shown above. It shows Sandford leaping full out, arms outstretched holding a net that captures the falling meteorite. (You can download a copy of the entire article.)

[NOTE: Scott Sandford is also the author of the classic paper explaining how and why if you properly compare apples and oranges — using spectrographic analysis — they are virtually identical. That article, too, was published in the Annals of Improbable Research.]