2018 LA: The Asteroid Spotted Hours Before It Hit Botswana
On 2 June 2018 a telescope in Arizona found a small asteroid eight hours before it struck Earth. It burned up over Botswana, and searchers in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve found pieces of it. Only the third asteroid ever seen before impact.
Sources NASA/JPL news release (3 June 2018); P. Jenniskens et al., 'The impact and recovery of asteroid 2018 LA', Meteoritics & Planetary Science 56 (2021) 844, doi 10.1111/maps.13653; Botswana Geoscience Institute; Wikipedia, '2018 LA'
On the morning of 2 June 2018 (Arizona time), the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson picked up a faint moving object. Within hours, orbit calculations at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies showed it was on a collision course. It was small, a couple of metres across, and harmless. At 16:44 UTC it entered the atmosphere over Botswana, and a webcam caught the fireball.
The search
Using the predicted track and video, a team led by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames, with the Botswana Geoscience Institute and the University of Botswana, searched the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Days later a geologist found the first fragment. The meteorites, named Motopi Pan, were reported in Meteoritics & Planetary Science in 2021 and linked to the asteroid Vesta.
Why it matters
Only the third asteroid ever seen before impact, 2018 LA was a live test of planetary defence: detect, predict, and recover.
Ledger status
Marked cited. Map position is region level within Botswana; the reserve requires permits.
Sources
- NASA/JPL, “Tiny Asteroid Discovered Saturday Disintegrates Hours Later Over Southern Africa” (3 June 2018) — jpl.nasa.gov
- Jenniskens, P., et al. (2021), Meteoritics & Planetary Science 56, 844 — doi:10.1111/maps.13653
- Wikipedia, “2018 LA” — en.wikipedia.org
Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.
Evidence ledger
Each claim in this file, the source it rests on, and how well it holds up: 4 corroborated. What the labels mean.
| Claim | Source | Type · date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalina Sky Survey discovered 2018 LA about 8 hours before impact on 2 Jun 2018. | NASA/JPL (2018); Jenniskens et al. (2021) | official · 2018 | corroborated |
| It entered over southern Africa and exploded as a fireball over Botswana. | NASA/JPL; Jenniskens et al. | scholarly · 2021 | corroborated |
| Meteorites (named Motopi Pan) were recovered in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. | Jenniskens et al. (2021); Botswana Geoscience Institute | scholarly · 2021 | corroborated |
| It was the third asteroid detected before impact, after 2008 TC3 and 2014 AA. | NASA/JPL | official · 2018 | corroborated |
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