Astronomers Calculate Russian Meteorite's Orbit, Find It Has 80 Million Cousins
Asteroid Orbits Both the asteroid 2012DA14 and the Chelyabinsk meteorite came from the asteroid belt, but from different orbits. Earth's orbit is shown in green. NASAThe Chelyabinsk meteorite came from a well-known family of Earth-crossing space rocks known as the Apollo asteroids. Thanks to dozens of video reports, scientists are getting a pretty good handle on the life history of the massive meteorite that exploded above Russia earlier this month. They know it is rocky and a common type, and now they know where it probably came from. Scientists are scrambling to publish papers describing its origins in the middle of the solar system. The asteroid chip that became the recent meteorite came from a spot in the asteroid belt near Jupiter, about 2.5 times further from the sun than Earth is, according to NASA. At the University of Antioquia in Colombia, astronomers Jorge I. Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin produced a preliminary...