PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Somewhere in a remote stretch of forest near Maine’s border with Canada, rocks from space crashed to Earth and may be scattered across the ground — just waiting to be picked up.
If you’re the first person to find a big one, a museum says it’ll pay out a $25,000 reward.
The unusually bright fireball could be seen in broad daylight around noon Saturday, said Darryl Pitt, chair of the meteorite division at the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum in Bethel.
NASA says four radar sweeps detected “signatures consistent with falling meteorites seen at the time and location reported by eyewitnesses,” and people also heard sonic booms. It’s the first time radar spotted a meteorite fall in Maine, the space agency said.
The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum wants to add to its collection, which includes moon and Mars rocks, Pitt said, so the first meteorite hunters to deliver a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) specimen will claim the $25,000 prize. That could be about the size of a softball.