Physics
Scientific paper
Mar 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009natur.458..485j&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 458, Issue 7237, pp. 485-488 (2009).
Physics
69
Scientific paper
In the absence of a firm link between individual meteorites and their asteroidal parent bodies, asteroids are typically characterized only by their light reflection properties, and grouped accordingly into classes. On 6 October 2008, a small asteroid was discovered with a flat reflectance spectrum in the 554-995nm wavelength range, and designated 2008 TC3 (refs 4-6). It subsequently hit the Earth. Because it exploded at 37km altitude, no macroscopic fragments were expected to survive. Here we report that a dedicated search along the approach trajectory recovered 47 meteorites, fragments of a single body named Almahata Sitta, with a total mass of 3.95kg. Analysis of one of these meteorites shows it to be an achondrite, a polymict ureilite, anomalous in its class: ultra-fine-grained and porous, with large carbonaceous grains. The combined asteroid and meteorite reflectance spectra identify the asteroid as F class, now firmly linked to dark carbon-rich anomalous ureilites, a material so fragile it was not previously represented in meteorite collections.
Albers Johann
Bishop Janice L.
Borovicka Jiri
Boslough Mark B.
Brown Peter G.
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