Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union

Table of Contents - 2009 - Volume 5, Symposium S263 (Icy Bodies of the Solar System)  

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Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union (2009), 5:227-230 Cambridge University Press
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2010
doi:10.1017/S1743921310001808

Contributed Papers

The unusually frail asteroid 2008 TC3

Peter Jenniskensa1, Muawia H. Shaddada2 and The Almahata Sitta Consortium

a1 SETI Institute, 515 N. Whisman Road Mountain View, CA 94043, USA email: petrus.m.jenniskens@nasa.gov
a2 Physics Department, Faculty of Science, University of Khartoum, P.O.Box 321, Khartoum 11115, Sudan email: shaddadmhsh@yahoo.com
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Abstract

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.

KeywordsMeteoroids; comets; asteroids