In Asteroid’s Aftermath, a Sigh of Relief - NYTimes.com

In Asteroid’s Aftermath, a Sigh of Relief - NYTimes.com:

"For now, though, they and other teams, including one from the University of Antioquia in Medellín, Colombia, have established that the meteor originated in the inner part of the asteroid belt, in a regular, harmless orbit around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. How it came to have an irregular Earth-crossing orbit is not known, but like other Earth crossers it was probably affected by the gravity of Jupiter or another planet at some point. It then circled the Sun every 18 months in a highly eccentric orbit — more than two and a half times the Earth-Sun distance at its farthest, close to the orbit of Venus at its nearest — before it smacked into the Earth’s atmosphere."

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