An iron meteorite with an orbit?

Kyrylenko et al. report in an LPSC abstract (PDF) that they might have found the first iron meteorite with an orbit. The still unnamed, unofficial meteorite (at time of checking the MetBull database on May 24th, 2022) with a mass of 13.7 kg fell on November 7th, 2020, and seems to have a determined orbit with rough parameters of a = 1.9 AU and e = 0.5. More details are certainly forthcoming in a future publication, at which point I will include the orbit on the list.

An iron meteorite with an orbit is a very welcome and exciting addition to the suite of meteorites with orbits. Irons make out only about 4% of all falls, so “it’s about time” we have one among the 40 orbits known today. While the orbital parameters given in the abstract do not look remarkably different, over time – with more iron meteorite orbits to be expected in the future – the picture of iron meteorite origins will become much clearer. /m4