Until now, only four asteroids (2008 TC3, 2014 AA, 2018 LA and 2019 MO) were known to have impacted the Earth’s atmosphere shortly after being discovered, but now another one is added: 2022 EB5, according to Minor Planet Center confirmed of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
“We observed this new asteroid at 8:25 p.m. (Spanish peninsular time) on March 11, 2022 from the Piszkéstető station of the Konkoly Observatory, in Hungary,” astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky tells SINC.
Movement of the asteroid 2022 EB5 discovered from the Konkoly Observatory (Hungary). / Konkoly Observatory’s Piszkéstető Station
2022 EB5 is the fifth asteroid discovered just hours before disintegrating in the Earth’s atmosphere.
About an hour later, an alert was sent to other European observers, encouraging them to keep an eye on the small object before it entered the gaseous layer of our planet. Data was also provided to predict the place and time of the impact (about 10:23 p.m. last Friday, March 11).
Less than two hours after its trail was detected from Hungary, asteroid 2022 EB5 collided with Earth’s atmosphere southwest of the island of Jan Mayen in the Norwegian Sea, in an area north of Iceland and east of Greenland. .
Impact! When 2022 EB5 struck the Earth north of Iceland this morning, it became the 5th asteroid to be discovered prior to impacting Earth. pic.twitter.com/kYsQ40uuFq
— Tony Dunn (@tony873004) March 12, 2022
“This rocky object produced a gust of air at a height of around 20-30 km and broke up; only small fragments could have fallen into the Norwegian Sea”, explains Sárneczky.
Around the predicted impact time, some observers in northern Iceland (near Akureyri) reported seeing a bright flash on the horizon. Shortly after, the signals caused by the entry of the asteroid were recorded at infrasound stations in Greenland and Norway.
Infrasound detection from 2022 EB5 impact off the coast of Iceland at I37NO between 2223-2227 UTC. Below is I18DK infrasound data in Greenland. Arrival near 2340 UTC. From this data yield is approximately 2-3 kT TNT. At 15 km/s, this is roughly 3-4 m diameter. @WesternU #2002EB5 pic.twitter.com/FYI9jn7zCb
— Peter Brown (@pgbrown) March 12, 2022
According to Professor Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario (Canada), these signals allow the total energy of the event to be estimated at around 2 kilotons of TNT. This helps to calculate that the asteroid’s entry speed was about 18 km/s for an object with a diameter of about two meters or 15 km/s if it was between three and four meters.
The data at the moment are provisional, but in any case it was a small asteroid and has not represented a danger: “The Earth’s atmosphere protects us from asteroids of a few meters in diameter,” Sárneczky reassures.