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Botswana asteroid likely came from Vesta – one of largest objects in asteroid belt
A small asteroid was discovered on an impact trajectory with Earth on June 2, 2018. Eight hours later, a video camera in South Africa recorded a bright fireball over Botswana. An international team of researchers, including Western’s Peter Brown and the Western Meteor Group, have now published their findings in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science after they tracked down the surviving meteorites deep inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in central Botswana.
“Combining the observations of the small asteroid in space with information gleaned from the meteorites shows it likely came from Vesta, target of NASA’s DAWN mission,” said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.