Scientists find asteroid fragment that collided with Earth in June

An asteroid fragment, collided with the Earth last month and caught fire in a few seconds after entering the Botswana atmosphere, was discovered in the Kalahari Reserve by a team international society of scientists.

The meteorite is one of the fragments of the 2018 LA asteroid that collided with the Earth on June 2 and turned into a meteorite fireball that exploded on the Botswana a few seconds after entering the atmosphere.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 the 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. the fragments were recovered. After the disturbance, the asteroid fragments were blown by the wind as they fell, dispersing over a large area.

Landing zone calculations were conducted independently by an American group led by Peter Jenniskens, an expert on NASA. sponsored SETI Institute in California, as well as Esko Lyytinen and Jarmo Moilanen from the Finnish Fireball Network (FFN). The first meteorite was found after five days of walking and digging by geoscientists.

The importance of discovery is twofold: it has tremendous scientific value and it allows to better calibrate the so-called "Earth Defense" against asteroids. The researchers collected security surveillance videos at Rakops and Maun, in order to obtain better constraints on the position and altitude of the fireball explosion. The search for more fragments of the meteorite continues.