Asteroid Impact Helps Trace Meteorite Origins
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - 22:35
in Astronomy & Space
The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was the first instance of an asteroid spotted in space before falling to Earth. Researchers rushed to collect the resulting meteorite debris, and a new study reports on this first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses of its fragments.