The asteroid seemed to be ejecting swarms of marble-sized rocks.
Meteorites are pieces of rock that fall to Earth from space; they can be pieces of moons and planets, but they are most commonly broken-off bits of asteroids.
The Aguas Zarcas meteorite was named after the Costa Rican town where it fell in 2019 and was donated to the Field Museum by Terry and Gail Boudreaux.
"We were attempting to isolate very small minerals from the meteorite by freezing it in liquid nitrogen and thawing it in warm water in order to break it up."
"We used CT scans to compare the pebbles to the other rocks in the meteorite."
However, the 2019 OSIRIS-REx findings provided the scientists with a hint. They then put together a hypothesis.
The asteroid collided at high speed, and the area of impact was deformed.