Europeans were treated to a light show as a meteor burned its way through the Earth’s atmosphere.
The meteoroid was detected hours before entering the Earth’s atmosphere. It was only the 7th time that astronomers spotted a meteoroid before it struck Earth, a trend that the European Space Agency credits to “rapid advancements in global detection capabilities.”
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The meteorite was named Sar2667 and was roughly 1 meter in length.
The advanced notice allowed people to capture the meteor in photographs and on video as it plummeted to the surface.
According to the ESA, there are over 30,000 asteroids that qualify as “near-Earth asteroids.” Small meteoroids like Sar2667 are quite common and strike the Earth every couple of weeks without posing much of a threat to the planet.
NASA considers asteroids in space larger than 140 meters “Potentially Harmful Asteroids.” About one-third of the roughly 30,000 “near-Earth asteroids” discovered are considered potentially harmful.
In 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft destroyed the asteroid Dimorphos in a test of the agency’s kinetic impact technique for protecting Earth from a catastrophic impact.
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