  We report the first-time recovery of a fresh meteorite fall using a drone and
a machine learning algorithm. A fireball on the 1st April 2021 was observed
over Western Australia by the Desert Fireball Network, for which a fall area
was calculated for the predicted surviving mass. A search team arrived on site
and surveyed 5.1 km2 area over a 4-day period. A convolutional neural network,
trained on previously-recovered meteorites with fusion crusts, processed the
images on our field computer after each flight. meteorite candidates identified
by the algorithm were sorted by team members using two user interfaces to
eliminate false positives. Surviving candidates were revisited with a smaller
drone, and imaged in higher resolution, before being eliminated or finally
being visited in-person. The 70 g meteorite was recovered within 50 m of the
calculated fall line using, demonstrating the effectiveness of this methodology
which will facilitate the efficient collection of many more observed meteorite
falls.
