Hasta La Gadget!

In a story worthy of Hollywood treatment, shocked astronomers in Sudan watched as an asteroid exploded above earth into a meteor shower, and then went into the desert to retrieve the pieces, according to an AFP report. A study in the British journal Nature concluded that this is the first time ever that scientists were able to recover pieces from a specific asteroid observed in space.

“Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come through the atmosphere,” said co-author Douglas Rumble, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution, in the article. “But to actually see this object before it gets to the Earth’s atmosphere and then follow it in—that’s the unique thing.”