A small asteroid harmlessly collided with Earth on 11 March, creating an explosion in the atmosphere over the Arctic, just hours after astronomers spotted it for the first time.
The space rock, named 2022 EB5, was first detected at around 7.20pm GMT at Piszkéstető Station Observatory in Hungary byan astronomer at Konkoly Observatory in Budapest. Other astronomers were then able to track it before it plunged through the skies to the north-east of Iceland just after 9.20pm GMT. It is one of only five asteroids to have been found and observed before hitting Earth.
“The very rapid dissemination of information from the discoverers allowed other astronomers to make more observations from different vantage points with enough lead time to calculate a precise orbit and its intersection with Earth,” saysThankfully, the asteroid was sufficiently small that it posed little danger – provisional estimates suggest it was around 1 to 2 metres across.
“Impacts of this size can be considered completely harmless. They typically create so-called ‘airbursts’ at altitudes of about 40 kilometres above ground,” says
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