Peter Jenniskens, an American NASA scientist, came specially from San Francisco to participate. “Of course I’m jealous, but I’m really happy that I was able to guide her to where she found the meteorite, I’m really proud of her,” does he react. The proudest and the most moved is nonetheless the father of the young woman. “It’s an immense, overflowing emotion, it’s magic”reacts Mickael Leblanc. “We’ve been watching the sky for 35 years, she’s been watching it since she was little.”
It is only the third time in history that an asteroid fragment observed in space before its arrival on Earth has been found. The discovery is also exceptional because of the vast search area. “There were a lot of pieces that spread out over several kilometers in length, and here we are in this ellipse of fall, and we are looking for these pieces that were fragmented during the entry into the atmosphere”, explains Sylvain Bouley, planetary scientist, professor at the University of Paris-Saclay. To summarize the task, the formula is all found: “looking for a needle in a haystack”. And to continue: “Of course we put a lot of energy into finding these little stones that look a lot like earth stones, but aren’t.”