The Galileo Project at Harvard and the PNG University of Technology formalize collaboration in scientific retrieval and analysis of meteorite fragments

CAMBRIDGE, USA/LAE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA — August 21, 2023 — Today Harvard University and the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, formalizing the two institutions’ research collaborations around the scientific retrieval and analysis of fragments from meteorites on the ocean floor with the aim of identifying the first interstellar meteor, CNEOS 20140108 also referred as IMl, which landed above the Pacific Ocean on January 8, 2014. 

Professor Avi Loeb (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian) and Professor Jim Lem (Department of Mining Engineering, Unitech) shared the news with the Galileo Project research team in a joint message, stating, “We are grateful to Unitech's Vice Chancellor, Professor Ora Renagi and Harvard's Vice Provosts, Professors Mark Elliott and John Shaw, who facilitated this agreement.”

About the Galileo Project

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts is a Harvard-hosted, cross-institutional research project launched in June of 2021 by co-founders Avi Loeb and Frank Laukien. Led by Professor Avi Loeb at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the Galileo Project searches for objects near Earth that could have originated from extraterrestrial technological civilizations. The project has three branches: the study of interstellar objects (ISOs) near Earth, the search for unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and the study of interstellar meteors (IMs). The project currently pursues software development for identifying ISOs in upcoming data sets, the assembly of the first UAP Observatories and the preliminary analysis of their initial data and the results from an expedition to retrieve fragments from the first interstellar meteor, IM1, in the Pacific Ocean.