Santa Filomena (H5-6), Ådalen (Iron) and Al-Khadhaf (H5-6) added

I have added three new meteorites to the list, which now lists 49 meteorites with published orbits. Santa Filomena (Tosi et al., 2023, MAPS) is a H5-6 fallen in Brazil in 2020, which has a considerable recovered mass (80 kg). Ådalen (Kyrylenko et al., 2023, ApJ), from Sweden, is the first iron meteorite with an orbit. Unfortunately, an ownership dispute (see e.g. here: Karmaka.de), now in appeal, still stands in the way of a detailed analysis of the meteorite, inlcuding the exact type and its publication in a Meteoritical Bulletin (I’ll note here that given the soon-to-launch mission to 16 Pysche, it would be very interesting to know more about the orbits of iron meteorites). Finally, Al-Khadhaf (H5-6; MetBull 112), with a very small recovered mass (ca. 22 g), is the first meteorite found with the help of a new camera network recently installed in Oman.

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