Reminds me of this week's Vice Motherboard story of astronomers investigating a second interstellar meteor reaching Earth. What I hadn't expected is that they w

Reminds me of this week's Vice Motherboard story of astronomers investigating a second interstellar meteor reaching Earth. What I hadn't expected is that they were given access to classified US military data, from sensors designed for missile detection: Hadrien Devillepoix, research associate at Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, told Motherboard over email that the raw data Loeb and Siraj are pulling from is classified and having even high-level bolide (meteor) data from that database is a “blessing” that’s been helpful in some applications but found to be limited in others. "Does this mean that those sensors are bad at the job they were designed for? No,” he said. “The satellite sensors behind the CNEOS catalog were presumably designed for detecting rocket and missile launches. Since the average meteor comes in at 10 times the speed of a ballistic missile, it is not surprising that in some cases the speed of these fast meteors can be poorly estimated.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5vd4w/alien-hunting-astronomer-says-there-may-be-a-second-interstellar-object-on-earth-in-new-study https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5vd4w/alien-hunting-astrono...