Inner Workings: Networks of cameras are tracking meteorites with unprecedented precision.

Around the globe, networks of camera lenses are trained upward. They scan the night skies, aiming to catch streaks of bright light: meteorites as they fall to Earth. Searching for these space rocks is not new. But the precision and resolution with which increasingly expansive networks of Earth-bound cameras are tracking meteorites is starting to offer insights into both where these bodies go and where they came from. For astronomers, catching sight of a meteor is more than a stroke of luck. It represents a potentially valuable research sample that has fallen to Earth. “These are samples of heavenly bodies reaching us decades before we might actually go there,” says Phil Bland, planetary scientist at Curtin University and director of the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) in Australia. His network is one of several high-tech attempts to track and gather meteorites in the hopes of understanding their origins, frequency, and composition.