The Costa Rica News (TCRN) – Every day, 9,000 meteors enter Costa Rican airspace according to data collected by radar from the University of Costa Rica (UCR).
The radar records all meteors entering the space above Costa Rica. These celestial bodies are detected by way of the plasma they leave when entering our planet’s atmoshere.
Walter Fernandez, a researcher for the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Planetary Research of UCR, reported that this instrument has detected up to 800 meteors per hour.
Fernandez explained that meteors do not actually reach the Earth’s surface; if they did, then they become meteorites.
“These bodies will enter the atmosphere, melt and disintegrate. They never actually touch the surface,” he added.
The radar identifies bodies entering a height between 80 and 100 kilometers. This is the least studied region of the atmosphere.
In the Americas there are only five areas where this layer of the atmosphere is monitored: United States, Canada, Chile, Argentina and Costa Rica. (Amelia Rueda)
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose, Costa Rica