Patrick M. Shober

I’m a planetary scientist in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division at NASA Johnson Space Center. My NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship builds machine-learning methods to automatically detect freshly fallen meteorites in the U.S. NEXRAD weather-radar network. It’s part of a broader goal of fusing radar, optical and infrasound data into a single picture of how meteoroids enter the atmosphere and reach the ground.

I specialise in the full chain from fireball → fall → meteorite, combining wide-field camera networks (DFN, FRIPON, the Global Fireball Observatory), small-body dynamics, and the physics of atmospheric entry. My work has shown that meteorite collections are a strongly filtered sample of what actually hits Earth, shaped by thermal fragmentation near the Sun and atmospheric survival (Nature Astronomy, 2025), and that most “comet-like” fireballs are in fact asteroidal interlopers. I earned my PhD at Curtin University (2022), have authored 28 peer-reviewed papers, and asteroid (33964) Patrickshober is named in recognition of this work.