The meteorite named CNEOS 2014-01-08, which entered the Earth’s atmosphere in 2014, fell into the ocean off the coast of Papua New Guinea. This meteor baffled scientists about its origin. After the discovery of the object, which was originally thought to be interstellar, researchers have announced their plans to scan the ocean floor for the object in a new research paper.

Here are the details of the meteor, which is thought to be interstellar:

The meteor is estimated to be half a meter wide, and the researchers learned about the object using catalog data about the object’s trajectory. They noted the object’s high heliocentric velocity and concluded that it might belong somewhere beyond our solar system. The researchers used data from the US Department of Defense spy satellite to measure the object’s impact on Earth.

However, the satellite is used to monitor Earth’s military activity, and the exact error values ​​of the measurements it takes are not publicly available. So this makes it difficult to confidently declare CNEOS 2014-01-08 as an interstellar object.

The findings, found by Siraj and Loeb, were replicated in 2019 by the US Space Force’s Space Operations Command Chief Scientist Joel Mozer. After analyzing the data on the object, Mozer confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA was accurate enough to indicate an interstellar orbit.

Now researchers aim to look for meteorite fragments that could scatter to the ocean floor. For this, tracking data from satellite and wind and ocean current data can help narrow down their search.