Authors:C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos
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.
My Comment: A second very short letter (busy week this), but it does something very remarkable, very hard, and very needed -- attempting to link the space rocks on the ground to the rocks in space. For the most part all we can do is try to match spectra of meteorite samples in the lab to the reflectance spectra of asteroids in space. It is filled with many pitfalls. This is really neat as it gives a second diagnostic tool to work with - the dynamics of the impactor's orbit.
My Scrawling Notes:
