"The fall of Aguas Zarcas was huge news in the country. No other fireball was as widely reported and then recovered as stones on the ground in Costa Rica in the past 150 years."

A mysterious "mudball" meteorite exploded in the skies above Costa Rica in 2019, scattering rare, water-rich rocks across the jungle. Scientists rushed to recover 27 kilograms of these stunning fusion-crusted stones,

Despite its reputation, outer space is far from empty, and the region around our planet is particularly riddled with space debris.

One of the most studied space rocks of all time has given scientists another big surprise, with the "mudball meteorite" Aguas Zarcas found to have been in orbit for two million years without crashing into any other objects – or if it did,

NASA is about to begin a massive hunt for hidden asteroids, and may uncover city-destroying space rocks we’ve missed. Thankfully if we do find one hurtling towards Earth, there’s hope

An asteroid discovered over 200 years ago which is roughly the size of Germany would have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth if it ever hit the planet.

This event marked the largest fall of its kind since the Murchison meteorite in Australia in 1969, with a total of 27 kilograms of rocks recovered.

In April 2019, rare primitive meteorites fell near the town of Aguas Zarcas in northern Costa Rica. In an article published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, an international team of researchers describes the circumstances of the fall and show that mudball meteorites are not necessarily weak.

For the first time, scientists are creating a geologic map of the asteroid belt—the region between Mars and Jupiter filled with rocky space objects. By tracking the paths of falling meteorites, astronomers can now trace where many of these space rocks originally came from.

Named 2024 YR4, it was estimated to be between 40m and 90m across, with the potential to cause massive damage if it hit a populated area of the planet. The chances of that happening, however, seemed to fluctuate significantly - ranging from 1% to a peak of 3%, before falling to virtually zero.

Where do meteorites of different type come from? In a review paper, astronomers trace the impact orbit of observed meteorite falls to several previously unidentified source regions in the asteroid belt.