Asteroid Impact Helps Trace Meteorite Origins

(PhysOrg.com) -- The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun. But that didn't stop it from having a huge impact among scientists. This 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 paper in Nature reports on this first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses of its fragments.

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<p><a href="http://www.physorg.com/news157211890.html">Asteroid Impact Helps Trace Meteorite Origins</a></p> <p>(PhysOrg.com) -- The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun. But that didn't stop it from having a huge impact among scientists. This 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 paper in <i>Nature</i> reports on this first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses of its fragments.</p>