Summary
A 27-inch asteroid, C0WEPC5, entered Earth’s atmosphere over Siberia on Tuesday, creating a harmless but visible fireball.
This marked Earth’s fourth detected asteroid strike of the year and only the 11th “imminent impactor” ever recorded.
The asteroid was detected by the Kitt Peak National Observatory ahead of impact, showcasing advancements in asteroid detection.
Separately, a larger asteroid, 2020 XR, measuring 1,200 feet in diameter, will safely pass Earth on Wednesday at a distance of 1.37 million miles.
AFAIK meteors come with a velocity spread of about a digit, which translates to a couple digits of energy, and then back to a single digit of blast radius. In Siberia that’s a nothingburger all around.
Also, the headline did say “massive”.
Headline is tricksy, first mention of “asteroid” (referring to the small one) isn’t with the descriptor “massive”, but the second one is.
They just added the one that’s gonna miss so they could get “massive” in the headline.
Also, one can play around with asteroid impacts with this fun little tool.
https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/
Only goes down to 1m, so larger than what it was. Iron core and I put it to 100km/s (fastest you can in that, default being like 17km/s) dropped it in Siberia, and it blew up 53 km above the ground. Tried again with switching angle to straight down and…