Scientists have studied a rare iron meteorite in detail, discovering what orbit its parent body S occupied before crashing to Earth. The 14-kilogram chunk fell to Earth after a fireball erupted over Sweden in 2020. Iron meteorites such as this constitute only around two per cent of the space rocks that make it to Earth’s surface, so the object became a rare and valuable sample.
Iron meteorites are believed to be fragments of molten metallic cores at the hearts of planetesimals, small bodies that existed around 4.5 billion years ago. Many of these bodies came together to form the Solar System’s planets. As such, studies of meteorites like this can reveal
