Fridge-sized asteroid hit Earth two hours after first spotted: Nasa
- Asteroid 2022 EB5 was around two metres long, a size Nasa said was ‘too small to pose a hazard to Earth’
- Asteroid disintegrated over western Greenland or coast of Norway; people in Iceland saw bright flashes
An 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.
On March 11, astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky noticed an asteroid at the Piszkesteto Observatory in Hungary. Sarneczky reported it to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which confirmed it was the first time the asteroid had been observed.
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. 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.
Luckily for Earth, the asteroid, named 2022 EB5, was around two metres long, a size “too small to pose a hazard to Earth”, Nasa said in a statement.
“Scout” determined the asteroid would enter Earth’s atmosphere around Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island roughly 480km (300 miles) northeast of Iceland. At 5.23pm ET, two hours after the asteroid was first spotted by Sarneczky, the asteroid hit Earth’s atmosphere just as “Scout” predicted.
It was the fifth time an asteroid was spotted hours before it hit Earth and the first time it’s happened since 2019.