New papers out: Žďár nad Sázavou in MAPS and Porangaba in Icarus

Spurný et al. report in a new paper in MAPS on the fireball trajectory, orbit and meteorite recovery of the Žďár nad Sázavou (L3.9) meteorite, which fell in the Czech Republic on December 9th, 2014. This is the first unequilibrated ordinary chondrite with an orbit. The orbit has been in the database since 2016 because it was published in a MetSoc (Berlin) abstract by Spurný et al., 2016, now superseded by the peer-reviewed paper. The changes in the orbital parameters given in the paper, relative to the ones given in the abstract, are marginal, but I updated the list nevertheless.

Ferus et al. report in a new paper in Icarus on the trajectory, orbit and meteorite recovery of the Porangaba (L4) meteorite, which fell in Brazil just one month after the fall of Žďár nad Sázavou, on January 9th, 2015. Using two pictures of the dust trail, as well as some security camera footage allowed the authors to derive a set of orbital parameters, albeit with a comparatively large uncertainty. But since there is a closed orbital solution (unlike, e.g., to the somewhat similar case of the 1995 St. Robert meteorite), I have added the meteorite to the database. An interesting detail: the addition of Porangaba makes 2015 the first year from which (at least) four meteorite falls with orbits are known. Compare this with the fact that it took 33 years for the first four orbits…

I have updated the fall statistics and orbit plots, which now include the most recent falls including Porangaba. /m4

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