An asteroid hit Earth off the coast of Iceland on Friday, passing just two hours after being discovered by an astronomer.

A small asteroid hit Earth over Iceland on Friday, just two hours after an astronomer detected it. The space rock, now named 2022 EB5, is believed to have mostly burned up in our planet’s atmosphere.. According to astronomers, even if it had hit the surface, it would have caused little or no damage because it was only 3 meters wide.

Krisztián Sárneczky, a Hungarian astronomer who is based at a station that is part of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest and who calls himself an asteroid hunter, found a small asteroid last Friday, March 11, which shortly after was included in the NEOCP (Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page) list. The asteroid received the provisional designation Sar2593 for monitoring. Minor Planet Center subsequently assigned the following official designation to this object 2022 EB5.

rumble and flash

Some people in Iceland reported hearing a rumble or seeing a flash of light as 2022 EB5 slid across the sky at 11 miles per second (18.5 km/s) between Greenland and Norway. No evidence of any meteorites has yet been found, but the International Meteorite Organization is looking for witnesses who may have seen something. Before the impact, which took place in the atmosphere north of Iceland at 21:22 GMT (16:22 ET) on Friday, March 11, the space rock became the fifth asteroid discovered before hitting Earth.

On Friday, orbit simulation expert Tony Dunn tweeted: “A few hours ago, the newly discovered #asteroid 2022 EB5 collided with Earth near Iceland at a speed of 18.5 km/s. This asteroid was too small to cause any damage.”

“The impact caused no damage, falling into the sea between Norway and Iceland,” said Weizmann Institute of Science astronomer Dr. David Polishook, who is also part of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. to try to deflect a massive space rock. He explained that the object 2022 EB5was not noticed before due to its small size.

Impact left 1,600 injured

The last major asteroid impact was in 2013 when a small object about 19 meters wide exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia. It struck the Earth’s atmosphere with an energy estimated to be equivalent to 500,000 tons of TNT, sending a shock wave twice around the world that caused widespread damage and injured more than 1,600 people.

Before there were other meteorites, the first, 2008 SS3was an 80-tonne, 4.1-meter-wide object that exploded over the Nubian desert in Sudan in October 2008. Some 600 meteorites were later recovered from the asteroid.

In 2014, a near-Earth asteroid named 2014 AA hit Earth’s atmosphere over Venezuela.

The 2018 LA it hit the atmosphere four years later and left behind pieces of debris near the Botswana-South Africa border. Two years ago it also hit 2019 MOthe fourth asteroid observed before impact with Earth, and generated a harmless explosion equivalent to 5 kilotons off the southern coast of Puerto Rico. (I)