Rock Science: First Meteorites Recovered on Earth from an Asteroid Tracked in Space

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - 18:49 in Astronomy & Space

Last October, asteroid monitors at the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona in Tucson picked up a small object on an immediate collision course with Earth. The asteroid was too small to present a real threat--just a few meters across, it stood little chance of penetrating the atmosphere intact. Indeed, it exploded in a stratospheric fireball over northern Sudan less than 24 hours later--an event witnessed by people on the ground as well as the pilots of a KLM airliner--conforming well to astronomer's predictions for its trajectory. [More]

Read the whole article on Scientific American

More from Scientific American

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net