  The world's meteorite collections contain a very rich picture of what the
early Solar System would have been made of, however the lack of spatial context
with respect to their parent population for these samples is an issue. The
asteroid population is equally as rich in surface mineralogies, and mapping
these two populations (meteorites and asteroids) together is a major challenge
for planetary science. Directly probing asteroids achieves this at a high cost.
Observing meteorite falls and calculating their pre-atmospheric orbit on the
other hand, is a cheaper way to approach the problem. The Global Fireball
Observatory (GFO) collaboration was established in 2017 and brings together
multiple institutions (from Australia, USA, Canada, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the
UK, and Argentina) to maximise the area for fireball observation time and
therefore meteorite recoveries. The members have a choice to operate
independently, but they can also choose to work in a fully collaborative manner
with other GFO partners. This efficient approach leverages the experience
gained from the Desert Fireball Network (DFN) pathfinder project in Australia.
The state-of-the art technology (DFN camera systems and data reduction) and
experience of the support teams is shared between all partners, freeing up time
for science investigations and meteorite searching. With all networks combined
together, the GFO collaboration already covers 0.6% of the Earth's surface for
meteorite recovery as of mid-2019, and aims to reach 2% in the early 2020s. We
estimate that after 5 years of operation, the GFO will have observed a fireball
from virtually every meteorite type. This combined effort will bring new,
fresh, extra-terrestrial material to the labs, yielding new insights about the
formation of the Solar System.
