Recovered Pieces of Asteroid Hold Clues to Early History

Scientists who for the first time tracked an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and watched it explodes, found remnants from the asteroid on the ground. An article in Thursday's issue of Nature gave scientist data on the composition of meteorites that originate from one type of asteroid called the F-class. Millions of asteroids have whirled around the Solar System and many people have picked up thousands of meteorites. Although no one really knows where they come from. This changed when Petrus M. Jenniskens organized a search team to look through a Sudan desert for pieces of asteroid that had been spotted less then a day before it hit Earth last year. ABout 280 pieces were found of a rare meteorite known as ureilites. The minerals in ureilites indicate that they were heated up but not not fully melted suggesting that they were once part of a much larger asteroid.