The fourth similar event in 2024: Asteroid fell on Russia and exploded (video)
Subscribe not to miss the latest and most intrusive news from the world of science! The European Space Agency has released a warning that in the territory of Russia, namely in the northeastern Siberia, should fall asteroid, at 11:27 in Kiev on Tuesday, December 3. The report said that this asteroid is approximately 70 cm in size, most likely not to reach the surface of the earth and burn in the atmosphere.
A few hours before, an asteroid, which was given the temporary name C0WEPC5, was first discovered by astronomers from the KITT-Pick National Observatory in the United States. At about 18:15, the residents of Yakutia watched a bright strip in the sky, and then a bright flash of light, when the asteroid C0Wepc5, as predicted, entered the Earth's atmosphere at high speed and exploded.
Such fiery balls, as the residents of the Russian Federation have seen, occur when small asteroids due to friction during the entry into the Earth's atmosphere fall into parts as a result of the explosion. It is unknown whether any fragments of this space stone have fallen on the ground if they could be. Given the size of the asteroid, it could completely burn in the atmosphere and not leave any debris.
Sometimes after such events, after a while, they find pieces of asteroid that have exploded, but it is very rare. Even if the C0WEPC5 asteroid could survive the passage through the atmosphere, which is almost impossible, because it is very small, then this stone would not have caused significant damage.
Astroids of different sizes approach daily with the Earth, and therefore the European Space Agency, NASA, with the help of special observation systems, constantly monitor the Earth space for the threat of the fall of asteroid. But tens of thousands of small asteroids go unnoticed because they reflect very little sunlight. Therefore, some of the asteroids falling to the ground are detected only a few hours before they cut into our planet. It happened this time.
According to Astrophysics Richard Moysl, the asteroid C0Wepc5 became the fourth space stone in 2024, which crashed into the ground, but it was discovered just a few hours before. In the history of observations of the Earth's asteroids, this is the 11th similar event. The first asteroid this year, which was spotted just before falling to the ground was a stone called 2024 BX1. Space stone is about 1 meter in size in the atmosphere over Germany in January.
The second similar asteroid, called 2024 RW1, exploded in the sky above the Philippines in September. The third case of falling on the ground of the same asteroid occurred in October. Then the 2024 UQ asteroid was found only 2 hours before it burned in the atmosphere over Hawaii. All these asteroids are not potentially dangerous in NASA classification. In order for the space stone to be considered potentially dangerous, it must be at least 150 meters.
But scientists watch thousands of such stones in space, which approach the ground at a distance of less than 7. 5 million km. It is believed that in this case, any unpredictable event in space can change the trajectory of flight of great astroid and it can potentially cut into the ground. So far, scientists' calculations show that by the end of the 21st century, no major astroid that could have caused a regional or planetary disaster to fall on our planet.
But small asteroids, which do not even reach the planet's surface, continue to crash into the ground quite often. In order to improve the detection of asteroids that can crash into the ground, NASA will send NEO Surveyor in space in the near future. It will be able to detect even small space stones, so scientists will be able to predict their fall on our planet much earlier.