April 30, 2021
In 2018, a small asteroid crashed into Earth, and scientists recovered pieces of it in a Botswana game reserve. Now the scientists have determined the space rock’s origin: Vesta, in the asteroid belt.
Shown here is the team that found the first meteorite from the breakup of asteroid 2018 LA in Botswana. They point to the space rock found there, later named Motopi Pan. Image via Meteoritics and Planetary Science/ Peter Jenniskens.
In 2018, an international team of scientists tracked a small asteroid as it streaked toward Earth and crashed into southern Africa. The team was able to find and collect pieces of the asteroid that were scattered across a Botswana game reserve. Now, the scientists believe they know the source of that asteroid. They say the space rock came from Vesta, the brightest and second-most massive object in the asteroid belt, a region of our solar system between Jupiter and Mars occupied by a great many solid, irregularly-shaped bodies of many si
Date Time
Asteroid that hit Botswana in 2018 likely came from Vesta
On June 2, 2018, a small asteroid was discovered on an impact trajectory with Earth. Eight hours later, a video camera in South Africa recorded a bright fireball over Botswana. An international team of researchers 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, second largest asteroid in our Solar System and target of NASA’s DAWN mission”, said lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.