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Scientists found a piece of meteorite the size of a car that exploded on the South African wilderness just seconds before the impact.
The rockery was captured by two farmers on CCTV on June 2nd. a flamboyant white heat trail in its wake.
It exploded into a huge fireball 30 miles before the impact – but only two seconds slamming into the savannah.
Researchers say the discovery "has tremendous scientific value" and allows for better calibration. Earth Defense & # 39; against impacting asteroids.
The incident was seen by a number of spectators in Botswana and neighboring countries and was captured on many security cameras.
Asteroid 2018 LA was detected in space eight hours before hitting Earth.
It was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, operated by the University of Arizona and sponsored by NASA as part of its global defense mission.
This is the third time in history that an asteroid coming into contact with the Earth has been detected early and only the second time that fragments have been recovered.
After the disturbance, the asteroid fragments were blown by the wind as they fell, dispersing over a large area.
The meteorite was found after a five-day walk and search by a team of geoscientists from the International University of Science and Technology of Botswana (BUIST), the Botswana Geoscience Institute (BGI) and the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) of the University of Botswana. 19659002] The Department of Wildlife and National Parks granted access and deployed park wardens for protection and participation in research.
Landing zone calculations were performed independently by a US-based group led by Peter Jenniskens, an expert at the NASA-sponsored SETI Institute in California, as well as Esko Lyytinen and Jarmo Moilanen of the US. Finnish Fireball Network (FFN
The Search for More Fragments of the Meteorite Continues
Farmer Barend Swanepoel posted incredible images of the cosmic rock heading to his farm at Ottosdal near the border with Botswana at 18:05 [19659014] The scrum between scientists and asteroid observers was a good training exercise.
Their ability to zoom into likely areas of impact is auspicious for the future , if and when a bigger object is heading towards us.
"It was a much smaller object that we are charged with detecting and warning." The Planetary Defense Officer, Lindley Johnson, declaimed in a statement.
"However, this real-world event allows us to exercise our capabilities and gives some confidence that our impact prediction models are adequate to respond to the impact." potential of a larger object. "
M. Swanepoel was taking his coffee The neighbor's farm "between Ottosdal and Hartbeesfontein" and was coming home when he saw the "huge fireball" & # 39; in the sky.
He said: "The advantage I had was I saw it in color and it was not like on the cameras. It was a falling fireball with that red tail behind and I thought the meadow was going to burn.
Unfortunately, the trees beside the gravel road hid the view of Mr. Swanepoel on the last dive.
CCTV and said, "One of the small cameras watching the barn with food for his animals took the pictures you saw on social media. It was amazing to see.
An asteroid four times larger exploded in Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, in an air explosion that blew glbad and injured more than 1,500 people with cuts caused by flying glbad and debris. Object Center said that the 2018 LA asteroid was traveling at 27.738 mph and was about the size of a small car.
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