Pre-airburst Orbital Evolution of Earth's Impactor 2018 LA: An Update
arXiv:1807.08322 · doi:10.3847/2515-5172/aad551
Abstract
Apollo meteoroid 2018 LA has become only the third natural object ever to be discovered prior to causing a meteor airburst and just the second one to have its meteorites recovered (at Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve). Here, we use the latest orbit determination of 2018 LA (solution date 18-July-2018) to search for minor bodies moving in paths comparable to that of 2018 LA using the D-criteria, which are metrics to study orbit similarity, and N-body simulations. Our results further confirm the existence of a dynamical grouping of asteroids that might be related to 2018 LA and show that the impactor could be a recent fragment spawned by a larger object, the 550-m wide, potentially hazardous asteroid (454100) 2013 BO73. Spectroscopic observations of 454100 during its next flyby with our planet (brightest at an apparent visual magnitude of 18.4 on 2018 mid-November) may confirm or deny a putative similar chemical composition to that of the recovered meteorites of 2018 LA.
4 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in Research Notes of the AAS
References in corpus (6)
- NEOWISE Reactivation Mission Year Two: Asteroid Diameters and Albedos
- On the origin of the Almahata-Sitta meteorite and 2008TC3 asteroid
- The atmospheric impact trajectory of asteroid 2014 AA
- Far from random: dynamical groupings among the NEO population
- Modeling collision probability for Earth-impactor 2008 TC3
- Homing in for New Year: impact parameters and pre-impact orbital evolution of meteoroid 2014 AA