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The unusually frail asteroid 2008 TC3

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

Peter Jenniskens  and
Muawia H. Shaddad
Peter Jenniskens
Affiliation:
SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road Mountain View, CA 94043, USA email: petrus.m.jenniskens@nasa.gov
Muawia H. Shaddad
Affiliation:
Physics Department, Faculty of Science, University of Khartoum, P.O.Box 321, Khartoum 11115, Sudan email: shaddadmhsh@yahoo.com
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Abstract

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The first asteroid to be discovered in space and subsequently observed to impact Earth, asteroid 2008 TC3, exploded at a high 37 km altitude and stopped ablating at 32 km. This would classify the fireball as of Ceplecha's PE-criterion IIIb/a, meaning “cometary” in nature. In this case, the structural weakness may have come from pores found in some of the recovered meteorites, called “Almahata Sitta” (= Station 6 in Arabic). The explosion turned most of the asteroid mass to dust and vapor, only a tiny fraction shattered into macroscopic meteorites, the heaviest of which was 283 gram. Other similarly frail asteroids may be related to main belt comets.

Keywords

Meteoroidscometsasteroids
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 5 , Symposium S263: Icy Bodies of the Solar System , August 2009 , pp. 227 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2010

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