The secondly - with child asteroid to hit Earth in the last 30 years went undetected , until now .
TheBBC report :
At about noontide local clip on 18 December , the asteroid barreled through the atmosphere at a pep pill of 32km / s ( 20 miles per second base ) , on a steep flight of seven degrees .
Measuring several meter in size of it , the space rock exploded 25.6 km ( 16 miles ) above the Earth ’s surface , with an impact energy of 173 kilotons .
“ That was 40 % the energy release of Chelyabinsk , but it was over the Bering Sea so it did n’t have the same type of effect or show up in the news , ” said Kelly Fast , near - Earth objects observation programme manager at NASA .
The US Air Force first reported that it had detected a fireball on its planet last year , according to the BBC study . NASA scientist Kelly Fast delivered the news at the 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas this hebdomad .
Some colour sight of the#meteorthat wing over the North Pacific in December 2018 , taken by Japan’s#Himawarisatellite . The meteor is really cleared here – bright orange bolide against the blue + white background signal !
Background : https://t.co / r403SQxicZpic.twitter.com / ctNN8zxsXb
— Simon Proud ( @simon_sat)March 18 , 2019
By 2020 , NASA shoot for to be tracking 90 pct of near - Earth objects larger than 140 meters ( ~460 foot ) in diam , but it ’s the diminished rocks that we should beworrying about . Not only are they more frequent , but they can occur without warning , as pass with the December 18th and Chelyabinsk case . minor rock might not menace the entire globe , but they can cause wrong and injury if they strike populated areas .
There ’s band more oeuvre to do on this front , and several possible solution . The Near - Earth Object Camera , or NEOCam , is a propose quad - based mission to go over smaller objects , but it has n’t been choose by NASA for launching . In the base time , if telescope did spot an asteroid that threatens Earth , astronomers have beenpracticingwhat their communications protocol would be .
It ’s life-threatening business , living on a major planet in a Solar System full of rocks and debris .
asteroidsAstronomyMeteorsNASAScience
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