The autonomous drones hunting for meteorite impact sites

The United States is home to many craters caused by meteorite falls (pictured in Arizona). — AFP Relaxnews

Researchers in the United States are using autonomous drones to photograph and then analyse little-known meteorite impact sites, looking for small, well-hidden pieces of space rock. Artificial intelligence is used to detect them among all the footage recorded by the drones.

While locating craters left on the Earth’s surface by large meteorites is relatively simple, it’s often more difficult to find smaller impact sites, even if, scientifically, these can be just as interesting to study. American researchers therefore decided to develop an original system to search for them, using autonomous drones.