CNEOS 2014-01-08

According to the researchers, the meteor originated from an unbound hyperbolic orbit with a confidence of 99.999%. The estimated speed of the meteor, around , was likely produced in the innermost cores of another stellar system. A 2019 study by Jorge I. Zuluaga published as a research note by the American Astronomical Society concluded that even if the direction were completely unknown, the probability that CNEOS 2014-01-08 was hyperbolic would still be 48%. Confirmation is stymied because information quantifying the accuracy of the U.S. government's data is not publicly available. In 2022, the United States Space Command divulged that data on the meteor velocity is "sufficiently accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory." Further related studies were reported on 1 September 2023. ==Search for fragments==

intends to recover fragments of CNEOS 2014-01-08 from the seafloor off the coast of Papua New Guinea Amir Siraj, one of the authors who reported the finding of the purported interstellar meteorite, noted, "We are currently investigating whether a mission to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Manus Island in the hopes of finding fragments of the 2014 meteor could be fruitful or even possible." Later, in a preprint (as well as in interviews), the authors described a planned expedition by The Galileo Project to retrieve small fragments of the meteor by deploying a magnetic sled on the seafloor of the impact region using a long-line winch, as the object—according to Loeb—"appears to be rare both in composition and in speed", and a possible identity with "extraterrestrial equipment" cannot be ruled out. Siraj noted that "[t]he alternative way to study an interstellar object at close range is by launching a space mission to a future object passing through the Earth's neighborhood"—a feat thought to be much more expensive than the project's planned budget of $1.6 million. In November 2022, a paper was published claiming that the purportedly anomalous properties (such as high tensile strength and strongly hyperbolic trajectory) possessed by CNEOS-2014-01-08 are better described as measurement error, rather than as genuine parameters. If this is correct, successful retrieval of any meteoroid fragments is highly unlikely. Other astronomers have doubted that the meteor was interstellar, and criticized Siraj's and Loeb's method for determining where the meteor might have landed on Earth—claiming, e.g., that the seismic data used by the two astrophysicists had resulted not from an impact, but merely from nearby truck traffic. == See also ==