Sightings2018

Asteroid 2018 LA detected hours before fireball over Botswana

When: 2 Jun 2018
Where: Central Kalahari, Botswana
Sources: 2 public sources

JPL's final trajectory of 2018 LA, which struck the atmosphere over Botswana Tomruen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey spotted a small asteroid about eight hours before it struck the atmosphere over Botswana as a fireball. Searchers found a meteorite in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve on June 23, one of very few cases of an impact predicted in advance.

Sources

PressPieces of 'Fireball' Meteor Found in Botswana (opens in a new tab)Space.com / 2018
OtherFragment of impacting asteroid recovered in Botswana (opens in a new tab)University of Helsinki / 2018-07-06

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