Discovery of a main-belt asteroid resembling ordinary chondrite meteorites.
Although ordinary chondrite material dominates meteorite falls, the identification of a main-belt asteroid source has remained elusive. From a new survey of more than 80 small main-belt asteroids comes the discovery of one having a visible and near-infrared reflectance spectrum similar to L6 and LL6 ordinary chondrite meteorites. Asteroid 3628 BoZnemcová has an estimated diameter of 7 kilometers and is located in the vicinity of the 3:1 Jovian resonance, a predicted meteorite source region. Although the discovery of a spectral match may indicate the existence of ordinary chondrite material within the main asteroid belt, the paucity of such detections remains an unresolved problem.
Binzel
R P
RP
Xu
S
S
Bus
S J
SJ
Skrutskie
M F
MF
Meyer
M R
MR
Knezek
P
P
Barker
E S
ES