A small near-Earth asteroid called 2022 EB5 disintegrated over the Norwegian Sea just two hours after its discovery on March 11, 2022.
An artist’s impression of a rocky asteroid. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, Space-art.co.uk / University of Warwick / University of Cambridge.
Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at Konkoly Observatory’s Piszkéstető Station in Budapest, Hungary, reported the observation of a fast moving object to the Minor Planet Center on March 11, 2022.
NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system then took early measurements to calculate the object’s trajectory.
As soon as Scout determined that the object, designated 2022 EB5, was going to hit Earth’s atmosphere, the system alerted the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) and NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and flagged the object on the Scout webpage to notify the near-Earth object observing community.
“Scout had only 14 observations over 40 minutes from one observatory to work with when it first identified the object as an impactor,” said Dr. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who developed Scout.
“We were able to determine the possible impact locations, which initially extended from western Greenland to off the coast of Norway.”
“As more observatories tracked the asteroid, our calculations of its trajectory and impact location became more precise.”
Scout determined that 2022 EB5 would enter Earth’s atmosphere southwest of Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island nearly 470 km (300 miles) off the east coast of Greenland and northeast of Iceland.
At 5:23 p.m. EST (2:23 p.m. PST), the asteroid hit the atmosphere as predicted by Scout, and infrasound detectors have confirmed the impact occurred at the predicted time.
From observations of the asteroid as it approached Earth and the energy measured by infrasound detectors at time of impact, 2022 EB5 is estimated to have been about 2 m (6.5 feet) in size.
“Tiny asteroids like 2022 EB5 are numerous, and they impact into the atmosphere quite frequently — roughly every 10 months or so,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“But very few of these asteroids have actually been detected in space and observed extensively prior to impact, basically because they are very faint until the last few hours, and a survey telescope has to observe just the right spot of sky at the right time for one to be detected.”
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This article is based on text provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
