Overview
- In a study published in March 2026, NASA’s Patrick Shober mined millions of all‑sky camera records and isolated 282 meteors that define a new shower named M2026A1.
- The meteors share an extreme path that swings almost five times closer to the Sun than Earth, pointing to debris from a dry asteroid on a sun‑skimming orbit.
- Video data on how the fireballs broke up show the fragments are moderately fragile yet tougher than typical comet dust.
- The source asteroid has not been seen with telescopes, and researchers say NASA’s infrared NEO Surveyor, slated for 2027, is the best bet to find it.
- The result spotlights how global meteor‑camera networks can reveal hidden near‑Earth objects that optical surveys miss and adds insight into how heat cracks rocky asteroids into streams of debris.