![]() ![]() Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, said asteroids like 2022 EB5 enter Earth's atmosphere around every 10 months, but it's hard to spot one before it's already entered the atmosphere. The International Meteor Organization said no meteorites from the asteroid have been recovered, but some people in Iceland reported seeing bright flashes, indicating the space rock became a fireball. "As more observatories tracked the asteroid, our calculations of its trajectory and impact location became more precise." We were able to determine the possible impact locations, which initially extended from western Greenland to off the coast of Norway," said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer who developed Scout. "Scout had only 14 observations over 40 minutes from one observatory to work with when it first identified the object as an impactor. ![]() It was the fifth time an asteroid was spotted hours before it hit Earth and the first time it's happened since 2019. EDT, two hours after the asteroid was first spotted by Sarneczky, the asteroid hit Earth's atmosphere just as "Scout" predicted. "Scout" determined the asteroid would enter Earth's atmosphere around Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island roughly 300 miles northeast of Iceland. Luckily for Earth, the asteroid, named 2022 EB5, was around 6½-feet-long, a size "too small to pose a hazard to Earth," NASA said in a statement. The system then notified the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and other asteroid impact systems. NASA's "Scout" system, which constantly searches the Minor Planet Center's database for any potential impacts, then calculated the asteroid's orbit, finding that the asteroid would certainly hit Earth. Sarneczky reported it to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which confirmed it was the first time the asteroid had been observed. On March 11, astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky noticed an asteroid at the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary. Watch Video: Fireball Streaks Across Sky Over IowaĪn asteroid around the size of a refrigerator was spotted hours before it hit Earth's atmosphere, and while it wasn't dangerous, it marked the fifth time in history an asteroid was detected right before hitting our planet. ![]()
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