The scientists wanted to know if Motopi Pan was also ejected from Vesta in the collision that created the Antonia crater at that time. One-third of all HED meteorites found on Earth were ejected 22 million years ago. When Dawn explored Vesta, it imaged the Antonia impact crater that was created in a collision 22 million years ago. Overall, we classified the material that asteroid 2018 LA contained as being howardite, but some individual fragments had more affinity to diogenites and eucrites. We studied the petrography and mineral chemistry of five of these meteorites and confirmed that they belong to the HED group. Roger Gibson of Witts University in Johannesburg, South Africa, said: The scientists eventually studied more of the 23 space rocks that they found, although they did find some variability between the meteorites. All the measurements added well together and pointed to values typical for HED type meteorites. We managed to measure metal content as well as secure a reflectance spectrum and X-ray elemental analysis from a thinly crusted part of the exposed meteorite interior. Tomas Kohout of the University of Helsinki said: Analysis of Motopi Pan conducted at University of Helsinki, Finland, showed it to also be an HED meteorite. Other meteorites that scientists have recovered and studied on Earth with this same makeup are known as HED meteorites. The rocks are types known as howardite, eucrite and diogenite ( HED). NASA’s Dawn mission, which visited the asteroid belt and studied Vesta in 2011, found that the asteroid’s surface is covered in coarse-grained basaltic and silicate-rich rocks.
The newly recovered meteorites gave us a clue on when those impacts might have happened. Billions of years ago, two giant impacts on Vesta created a family of larger, more dangerous asteroids. Jenniskens explained how they tied 2018 LA to Vesta:Ĭombining 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. Image via Meteoritics and Planetary Science/ Peter Jenniskens. Meteorites are shown in the order they were found with Motopi Pan at top left. Asteroid 2018 LA in space (top left image by the Catalina Sky Survey) and the 1st 23 meteorites recovered on the ground as photographed in situ. The first meteorite found was named Motopi Pan after a nearby watering hole. An international team guided by SETI Institute meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens eventually found 23 fragments of the asteroid, which they estimate to originally have been 5 feet (about 1.5 meters) in diameter. When the asteroid – now known as 2018 LA – was discovered, it was only the second asteroid in space detected before hitting land. Some rarer sources of meteorites are the moon and Mars. Most of the meteorites found on Earth were once part of asteroids from the asteroid belt that chipped off the parent body in a collision. Rocks from space that reach Earth’s surface are called meteorites. The study of the findings was published April 23, 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science. The researchers say it’s one of these pieces of space debris that landed in Africa in 2018. 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 sizes.ĭuring the early days of the solar system, 1 to 2 billion years ago, enormous collisions nearly shattered Vesta, creating a slew of fragments that occasionally get close enough to Jupiter to hurl them in toward Earth. Now, the scientists believe they know the source of that asteroid. The team was able to find and collect pieces of the asteroid that were scattered across a Botswana game reserve. In 2018, an international team of scientists tracked a small asteroid as it streaked toward Earth and crashed into southern Africa. They point to the space rock found there, later named Motopi Pan. Shown here is the team that found the first meteorite from the breakup of asteroid 2018 LA in Botswana.
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