2018 LA
Key facts
- What it is
- Small asteroid that struck Earth on 2 June 2018
- Size
- Under 2 m across
- Discovered
- 2018, by the Catalina Sky Survey
- Spacecraft
- Fell over Botswana; meteorites recovered
- Orbit group
- Apollo
- Average distance from the Sun
- 1.38 au (about 210 million km)
- Time to go round the Sun
- 590 days
- Closest and farthest from the Sun
- 0.78 to 1.97 au
- Tilt of its orbit
- 4.3°
- Closest its orbit comes to Earth's
- 3,700 km (0 times the Moon's distance)
An au (astronomical unit) is Earth's average distance from the Sun, about 150 million km. Orbit figures are from open tracking data, figures last updated 1 Nov 2026.
2018 LA was a small asteroid, less than 2 metres across, discovered on 2 June 2018 by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona only about eight hours before it reached Earth. Calculations soon showed it would enter the atmosphere over southern Africa, and that evening it did, lighting up the sky over Botswana as a brilliant fireball. Security cameras and people out in the evening recorded the flash.
It was only the third asteroid ever spotted in space before striking Earth. Because its path had been tracked, scientists could work out roughly where any fragments should have landed: in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. A team from Botswana, South Africa, Finland and the United States searched the area on foot, and on 23 June a geologist from the Botswana International University of Science and Technology found the first piece. More were found in later searches.
The meteorite was named Motopi Pan, after a waterhole near where it was found. It turned out to be a howardite, one of the HED meteorites that come from the giant asteroid Vesta, the same kind of rock this site is named after. By combining the orbit of the asteroid before impact with the age and chemistry of the fragments, scientists were able to trace it back. Its long journey seems to have begun with an impact on Vesta that sent a fragment out into the belt, from where it slowly drifted onto an orbit that crossed Earth's.
2018 LA showed how improved sky surveys can now catch even very small objects in time to predict where they will fall.