The desert fireball network: A sensor network for meteorite tracking and recovery

The Desert Fireball Network is a sensor network on a continental scale, with the objective of recovering fresh meteorite falls and calculating associated heliocentric orbits. The network was first established in 2005 as a trial network of three (and later four) film camera observatories, which had immediate success with the successful recovery of meteorites in 2008 and 2010. The network was re-established in 2012 as a network of digital fireball observatories, and now comprises over 50 observatories with an observable area over 2.5 million square kilometres. The new digital network was validated at the very end of 2015, with the successful recovery of the Murrili meteorite from Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in South Australia. This paper describes the design of the observatories and network, and outlines a semi-automated data pipeline which handles nearly a petabyte of data per year.