IT'S AMAZING what nature throws at us - literally. Each year, thousands of tonnes of rubble from space rains down on the Earth's atmosphere, the largest chunks streaking across the sky in startling fireballs. Those big enough to plonk meteorites on the Earth's surface could reveal amazing secrets about distant parts of the solar system. Unchanged since the birth of the solar system, these space rocks could tell us about the chilly outposts where they were born.
Except that meteorites, sadly, don't carry birth certificates. "We have no idea where any of them come from," says Phil Bland, a planetary scientist at Imperial College London. "Trying to understand the early solar system from meteorites is like trying to understand the geology of Britain from a trailer load of random rocks dumped in your backyard."
Bland hopes to change all that. He and his colleagues are building a network of robotic ...
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