A High-Likelihood Polar Interstellar Meteor Candidate

We report a newly identified polar interstellar meteor candidate, labeled polarIM, detected on 2026-04-01 02:13:14 UTC at latitude-41.9, longitude-54.7, and altitude 90.5 km over the South Atlantic Ocean, east of Argentina. We transform the reported Earth-fixed velocity vector (+3.6,,-34.6,,+59.8) km,s-1 to an inertial geocentric state, remove Earth's gravitational acceleration with a two-body hyperbolic model, add the JPL Horizons heliocentric velocity of Earth, and test the resulting heliocentric orbit against solar escape speed. The final velocity component in the polar (z) direction of +47.09 km,s-1 exceeds by itself the local solar escape speed v esc,=42.14 km,s-1. The full heliocentric speed is v hel=51.73 km,s-1, corresponding to positive heliocentric specific energy epsilon=+450.1 km squared,s-2, heliocentric excess speed v infinity,=30.00 km,s-1, and a two-body inclination i=89.4. We propagate measurement uncertainty through 1,000,000 Monte Carlo realizations using the empirical post-2018 low-discrepancy CNEOS error model of Pena-Asensio et al. (2025), with sigma v=0.55 km,s-1, sigma RA=1.35, and sigma Dec=0.84. No realization yields a bound heliocentric orbit, giving a statistical confidence on the interstellar fraction of >99.9997%. The Monte Carlo margin above escape is =9.60 plus or minus0.75 km,s-1, corresponding to a 12.82 sigma margin-to-scatter ratio under the adopted perturbation model. The result identifies polarIM as the highest-margin post-2018 candidate in the CNEOS catalog.