Bright fireballs or bolides are caused by meteoroids entering the Earth ’ s atmosphere at high speed .
Some have a cometary origin , a few may have originated within the Venus-Earth-Mars region as a result of massive impacts in the remote past but a relevant fraction is likely the result of the break-up of asteroids .
Disrupted asteroids produce clusters of fragments or asteroid families and meteoroid streams .
Linking a bolide to a certain asteroid family may help to understand its origin and pre-impact dynamical evolution .
On 2013 February 15 , a superbolide was observed in the skies near Chelyabinsk , Russia .
Such a meteor could be the result of the decay of an asteroid and here we explore this possibility applying a multistep approach .
First , we use available data and Monte Carlo optimization ( validated using 2008 TC _ { 3 } as template ) to obtain a robust solution for the pre-impact orbit of the Chelyabinsk impactor ( a = 1.62 au , e = 0.53 , i = 3 \aas@@fstack { \circ } 82 , \Omega = 326 \aas@@fstack { \circ } 41 and \omega = 109 \aas@@fstack { \circ } 44 ) .
Then , we use this most probable orbit and numerical analysis to single out candidates for membership in , what we call , the Chelyabinsk asteroid family .
Finally , we perform N -body simulations to either confirm or reject any dynamical connection between candidates and impactor .
We find reliable statistical evidence on the existence of the Chelyabinsk cluster .
It appears to include multiple small asteroids and two relatively large members : 2007 BD _ { 7 } and 2011 EO _ { 40 } .
The most probable parent body for the Chelyabinsk superbolide is 2011 EO _ { 40 } .
The orbits of these objects are quite perturbed as they experience close encounters not only with the Earth–Moon system but also with Venus , Mars and Ceres .
Under such conditions , the cluster can not be older than about 20–40 kyr .