Scientists Track Asteroid That Hurtles To Earth And Recover Pieces

[G_j]

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Scientists_Track_Asteroid_That_Hurtles_To_Earth_And_Recover_Pieces_999.html

Scientists Track Asteroid That Hurtles To Earth And Recover Pieces

by Staff Writers
Paris (AFP) March 25, 2009

Stunned astronomers watched a car-sized asteroid explode into a brilliant meteor shower as it crashed into Earth's atmosphere, and then wandered into a Sudan desert to pick up the pieces, a study released Wednesday reported.
It was the first time ever that scientists recovered fragments from an asteroid detected in space, according to the study, published in the British journal Nature.

"Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come through the atmosphere," said co-author Douglas Rumble, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution.

"But to actually see this object before it gets to the Earth's atmosphere and then follow it in -- that's the unique thing."

The drama unfolded like an overheated Hollywood script, according to a reconstruction of the event by Nature.

On October 6 last year, an amateur star gazer in Arizona submitted the coordinates of an asteroid he had spotted to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It was a routine logging, one of hundreds. But the computer system mysteriously refused additional data, recalled the Center's director, Tim Spahr.

"As soon as I looked at it and did an orbit manually, it was clear it was going to hit Earth," he told the journal.

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[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Wow. I will have to tell the kids this tomorrow. Very cool.

[lumpy]

2. Awesome !

v