Fripon is French for Meteorite Hunting
Just a few weeks ago, we reported on a US NASA project to track the path and estimate the size of meteoroids in the sky using a distributed network of a handful of cameras. It turns out that there’s a similar French effort, and it’s even cooler: the Fireball Recovery and InterPlanetary Observation Network (FRIPON). (The name is cute, if the acronym is contrived: a “fripon” is a trickster in French.)
What’s cool about FRIPON is that they’re not just observing the meteorites and fireballs, but they’re actually sending people out to recover them when they’re big enough that they …read more
