Damien Gayle
An incredible world-first video shows the moment that a skydiver was nearly hit by a meteorite as it hurtled towards the Earth.
Anders Helstrup missed certain death by just a few feet when the space rock hurtled past him at 300mph after he leapt from a plane over Hedmark, south east Norway.
Experts are convinced it was a meteorite in ‘dark flight’, that portion of its descent after it ceases glowing. If so, it would be the very first time that this has been witnessed and recorded on video.
Heavens above! The meteorite can be clearly seen in this frame from the footage taken by Anders Helstrup’s helmet-mounted camera as he plummeted towards the Earth over the Hedmark region of Norway
Great view: A shot from the aircraft Mr Helstrup and his companions leapt from shows how high he was
Geologist Hans Amundsen told NRK.no, a Norwegian news site which also publishes in English, that he was convinced that what fell past Mr Helstrup was indeed a meteorite.
‘It can’t be anything else. The shape is typical of meteorites – a fresh fracture surface on one side, while the other side is rounded,’ he said.
Mr Helstrup was with with several other members of the Oslo Parachute Club when he made the skydive after taking off from the nearby Østre Æra Airport.
It was just after he opened his parachute that a falling stone cannoned past just a few feet away.
But immediately after the jump, Mr Helstrup had no idea that he had come so close to an almost certainly fatal collision – merely that something odd had happened.
‘I got the feeling that there was something, but I didn’t register what was happening,’ he said.
Luckily, Mr Helstrup had recorded the jump on a helmet-mounted camera. Playback revealed very clearly that something did happen.
‘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,’ he said.
Video Copyright: Anders Helstrup/Dark Flight – For full video click here
‘I got the feeling that there was something, but I didn¿t register what was happening’: It was only when Mr Helstrup, far left, replayed the footage he had captured during the jump that he saw the rock flying by
‘It can¿t be anything else. The shape is typical of meteorites’: Geologist Hans Amundsen, centre, who has worked with Nasa, said he was convinced that what fell past Mr Helstrup, right, was indeed a meteorite
Analysis: The footage is unique because it is the first time a meteorite has been captured in so-called ‘dark flight’, after it has been slowed so much by its passage through the atmosphere that it ceases to glow
Mr Helstrup, who lives in Oslo, became preoccupied with the experience, taking time off work to search the countryside near Rena, the town he and his fellow skydivers had jumped over.
Eventually he contacted Oslo’s Natural History Museum, where the film caused a sensation with experts who were convinced that the stone which plunged past him was a meteorite.
Lucky escape: The meteorite hurtled past Mr Helstrup at a speed of 300mph
Dr Amundsen, who has worked with Nasa, said he believes that the rock was part of a larger stone that exploded something like 12 miles above Mr Helstrup.
What makes the footage unique is that it is the first time that a meteorite has been captured in so-called ‘dark flight’.
When meteoroids reach the Earth’s atmosphere, they heat up and shed glowing materials in their wake creating blazing tracks of light across the sky that are known as meteors or ‘shooting stars’.
But by the time they reach around 12 miles altitude, the remnants of the meteoroid will slow down to the point that this ablation process stops and they cease to generate visible light – a phase known as ‘dark flight’.
‘It has never happened before that a meteorite has been filmed during dark flight; this is the first time in world history,’ said Dr Amundsen.
Now the hunt is on to track down Mr Helstrup’s meteorite, with experts analysing its trajectory and triangulating a search area that has so far been limited to a 100 metres square region.
However, with difficult terrain of bogs, thick forest and scrub to cover, the search has so far proved fruitless, despite Mr Helstrup’s enthusiasm.
‘I found a stone which I thought was a meteorite and took it to the museum. They just fell about laughing,’ he said.
