Hope drone will find meteorite

University of Otago master’s student Thomas Stevenson is stitching together 1005 aerial images he took with a drone to re-create a 4 sq km search area on a Lee Stream farm — southeast of Middlemarch, northwest of Outram — which he hopes will reveal the crash site.

As Otago geology students searched the farm believed to be where the meteor crashed about 10.50pm on Sunday, August 28, Mr Stevenson put his drone up to survey the ground.

The map of the area he was creating would be finished today.

Yesterday, after reviewing 881 of the 1005 photographs without uncovering signs of a meteorite, he remained optimistic it would be found, he said.

A 1kg meteorite, or a rock the size of a fist, would be expected to create a crater with a 1m diameter, Mr Stevenson said.

However, estimates of the size of the fireball had increased and now ranged up to 30kg.

A meteorite…