Map showing asteroid hits of past 20 years

Asteroids entering the Earth’s atmosphere are very frequent occurrences summiting around mid August when the Earth is crossing the meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, during the so called Perseids days. Entering the atmosphere asteroids disintegrate due to friction and would burn up if they are small objects, which we can observe as small fireballs transecting the sky. Every day the Earth is bombarded by more than 100 tons of sand sized dust from space, only once a year an automobile-size asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere creating an huge and often explosive fireball, whereas asteroids of a certain size do not disintegrate completely before hitting the surface. The largest event within the last twenty years was a asteroid of around 20m size that entered the atmosphere near the city of Chelyabinsk in central Russia on February 15, 2013, exploding in the air before it hit the ground. The release of energy from that event corresponds to approximately 440.000 – 500.000 tons of TNT.

NASA’s NEO Observations Program

NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program finds, tracks, and characterizes asteroids whose orbits bring them within approximately 50 million kilometers (31 million miles) of Earth’s orbit about the sun. It aims to find potentially harzadous asteroids that are expected to come close to the Earth. NEO claims to have detected already 96% of the estimated 1000 asteroids with 1km size and larger. The NEO Observation Program’s current objective is to find 90% of the 140m and larger sized objects that are around 25 times more frequent than asteroids of 1km size and thus more susceptible to hit the Earth.

Explaining the Map

However, the map at hand shows asteroids of 1m size and more that hit the Earth’s atmosphere within the past 20 years (1994 – 2013). Around 556 events of different energy impact were recorded indicated by the size of the dots. The colour refers to the time the event happened – orange color stands for daytime events and blue colour for nighttime events. The emitted radiant energy at each occurrence was recorded from which the total impact energy can be estimated using an empirical relationship: the smallest dot on the map presents 1 billion Joules of optical radiant energy, which is equivalent to around 5 tons of TNT. The size of the recorded asteroids ranges from 1m to 20m, smaller asteroids were not recorded due to the lack of radiant energy hitting the Earth.

So, think about what you wished when you observed your last falling star and if that wish has already been realised.

 

NASA Map

NASA Map

 

Directions Magazine

 

Say thanks for this article (0)
The community is supported by:
Become a sponsor
#
#10m #30m #Copernicus #Deep Learning #Environment #Environmental Protection #Landsat #Natural Resources #Optical #SAR #Science
Leveraging Satellite Technology for Advanced Detection and Monitoring of Oil Spills
Avatar for Shimonti Paul
Shimonti Paul 07.15.2023
AWESOME 3
#< 0.10m #10m #1m #Agriculture #Construction #Drones #Environment #Environmental Protection #Featured #Multispectral #Optical #SAR #Science
Are Drones and Satellites Competing or Complementary as Sources of Geospatial Data?
Aleks Buczkowski 01.19.2024
AWESOME 7
#Agriculture #Copernicus #Environment #Environmental Protection #ESG #Featured #Geospatial analytics #Hyperspectral #Landsat #Multispectral #Optical #SAR #Vegetation Indexes #Vegetation Management
The EU’s Regulation on Deforestation-free Products and the Role of Earth Observation
Avatar for Muthukumar Kumar
Muthukumar Kumar 04.14.2023
AWESOME 9
Next article

PocketQube: 5cm Cube Satellite that is even smaller than a CubeSat

On October 4th, 1957, former USSR launched Sputnik-1, a 58cm artificial satellite that made Space history by being the first man-made object to orbit around the Earth. Around the turn of the last decade, Universities started getting involved in making Satellites – small Nano Satellites, Satellites that had Smartphones as their Computing nerve center and CubeSats; changing the Space Industry and making Space more accessible! (Read more: How Earth Observation Startups & CubeSats are changing the Industry).

Pocketqube

Several Earth Observation companies including PlanetLabs and Skybox Imaging are already utilizing CubeSats for Earth Observation purposes. Just when CubeSats are being touted as the next big thing in Space engineering, PocketQube, a start-up based in Scotland wants to get more people involved in Space engineering by helping them build a 125cm³ (5cm Cube) satellite!

PocketQubes (also known as PocketQub or Pocket Cube) are 5cm cubed spacecraft, proposed by Prof Bob Twiggs of Morehead State University (formerly Stanford). The first 4 PocketQubes made orbit on the 21st of November 2013. – PocketQube

PocketQube offers components and expert support for building your own satellite and in addition, can also help organize the launch of your satellite into Low Earth Orbit. PocketQube is making it really easy for schools and universities or for that matter, anyone who is interested in Space engineering to get hands on experience in building a satellite.

Although, the technical capability of the smart phone sized PocketQube satellite is rather limited, there is no limits to the educational value such a low-cost and easy-to-build satellite will have.

Here’s the link to their website.

Read on
Search