posted 04-03-2014 05:18 PM               

A Norwegian man narrowly avoided being hit by a meteorite while skydiving and has captured the first ever video footage of a meteorite travelling through the air after its flame has gone out.

Anders Helstrup, who belongs to the Oslo Parachute Club said "I got the feeling that there was something, but I didn't register what was happening,"

"When we stopped the film, we could clearly see something that looked like a stone. At first it crossed my mind that it had been packed into a parachute, but it's simply too big for that."

posted 04-03-2014 09:27 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by canyon42:
Um, guys, aside from wind resistance, things in simple free-fall would be falling at pretty much the same rate, regardless of the weight of the man or the density of the rock.

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posted 04-04-2014 11:03 AM               

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Originally posted by gliderpilotuk:
Was it filmed on April 1st?

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posted 04-04-2014 01:18 PM               

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Originally posted by James C:
It's going too slowly...

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posted 04-04-2014 02:35 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Liembo:
Why couldn't the pebble have come from his canopy?

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posted 04-04-2014 07:35 PM               

Skydiving flight operations are generally regulated quite tightly by the relevant Aviation Authority in each country. Drop a rock like that out of an aircraft that can kill someone on the ground or seriously injure a parachutist under an open canopy and those responsible are highly likely to be grounded in short order. Can't see a jumpship pilot or loadmaster pulling a stunt like that. Skydive Arizona at Eloy have dropped all sorts of stuff from furniture to cars out of aircraft on "Junk Day" in the past, but that is into a designated area in the desert using very experienced guys.

Packing methods for Ram-Air main canopies vary from Precision Pack - Side Pack - Flat Pack - Pro Pack - Trash Pack etc. Flat Pack is performed with the canopy laid out on the ground versus Pro Pack which is performed with the canopy draped over your shoulder. A parachute system is a life-saving device - its airworthiness literally is the difference between life and death for a skydiver. Any sane skydiver packs his rig actively looking for defects in the harness, lines, toggles, canopy etc. It is highly unlikely that a rock would be packed into a chute and not felt, as a lot of air is systematically expelled from the canopy as it is carefully folded and re-folded before being compressed into the bag. The process is very hands-on and you would identify a foreign object like that pretty quickly.

Most normal canopy deployment altitudes are in the 1500-2500FT AGL range. In that low troposphere / planetary boundary layer, air resistance has a significant effect on the velocities of falling objects. The velocity and trajectory of the object do not appear consistent with the hypotheses that this rock originated from either the jumpship or the canopy.

posted 04-05-2014 10:35 AM               

...I have to admit the video does look legit. My default response is of course extreme skepticism; video hoaxes seem to outnumber real ones ten to one.

But my conclusion here is that unless this was faked outright — and there may simply be no way to ever know that — then this does show what appears to be a rock falling, and that means it may be a meteorite. It certainly looks that way!

posted 04-06-2014 06:46 AM               

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Originally posted by Rusty53:
Wouldn't one expect it have rounded edges if it has just entered the atmosphere?

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posted 04-06-2014 01:03 PM               

Most people unfamiliar with real meteorites tend to picture them as roundish, often with little pockmarks on the surface, and usually as being red hot and trailing smoke or fire. Hence most amateur hoaxes would tend to show some or all of these features.

posted 04-07-2014 05:36 AM               

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Originally posted by Lunar rock nut:
By the way, it is a meteor until ground contact. Then a space rock is termed a meteorite.

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posted 04-07-2014 04:19 PM               

1. What environment was the rig packed in e.g. on a packing mat in a hangar or on grass?

2. How was the main canopy packed - Flat or Pro?

3. Surely there should be multiple examples of video footage of foreign debris falling out of RAM-air main cells if this is a common event?

posted 04-08-2014 01:16 PM               

There is no meteorite. It was a rock accidentally packed into the parachute.

...we think we can reconstruct what happened: A pebble, a few cm in size at most, was accidentally caught inside the parachute at the landing site after the previous jump. Then the parachute was packed on a clean floor and the pebble was not noticed. Then Anders made the jump with the stowaway. This is a wingsuit dive and he’s travelling fast northwards at an downward angle of approximately 40 degrees. When he releases the parachute, the wind catches it and it shoots out to the south of him. The parachute is held back by the cords, but the pebble is not. The pebble is now increasingly getting further south and further above Anders. However, the parachute then slows Anders down, he makes a 250 degree clockwise rotation and at this moment the pebble happens overtake him. It had now been falling for a few seconds and was no longer accelerating much.

Literally a less than a second later the big chunk goes by, making it pretty clear they’re connected by the same event: the parachute unfurling. If they were both meteoroids, there is no way a smaller one would be so close to the bigger one; air resistance would have separated them by hundreds or thousands of meters by this point. The more logical and parsimonious explanation is that they came from the parachute itself, accidentally wrapped up with it when it was prepped for the jump.

posted 04-09-2014 03:18 PM               

The participants took two years to study the footage, then released the video in the hope of crowdsourcing an answer, did so, and accepted the explanation that it was not a meteorite but a rock.

posted 04-10-2014 05:28 AM               

At first it crossed my mind that it had been packed into a parachute, but it's simply too big for that.

posted 04-17-2014 04:35 PM               

When packing your canopy you have to lay on top of it and rub your hands the full length of the partly folded canopy to get as much air out as possible in order to get it into a very small deployment bag. I can feel the micro lines inside the folded canopy. Picking up the feel of any foreign objects come second nature to an experienced packer.

posted 04-17-2014 05:29 PM               

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Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
To what end?

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posted 04-17-2014 05:47 PM               

The people behind the video seem to have done their research — in private — for two years, and consulted with experts before going public. And, once doing so and being shown they were wrong, they accepted the findings without argument.

Based on what I've read of the analysis of the video, it seems pretty clear to me that it was a pebble (actually pebbles, plural, as a second much smaller rock appears to be visible in the video as well).

As for the anecdote of any experienced skydiver being able to find a rock in their chute, that's apparently not the case, as others have come forward as a result of this video with stories of having watched pebbles escape from their parachutes as they deployed.