NASA made public on Friday the fact that a sizable meteoroid impact on the lunar surface occurred on March 17,2013.Detected by analyst Ron Suggs of the Marshall Space Flight Center with video from a 14-inch telescope,the flash was 10 times greater than anything seen before in the eight years of the lunar impacts monitoring program.
The impact took place in the Mare Imbrium area and had a brightness as of a fourth magnitude star.The meteoroid was traveling at a speed of 56,000 miles an hour when it struck the moon.
The monitoring program has ascertained that meteors hit the moon more often than anyone ever expected,NASA said.Though this particular meteor was only 3-4 meters across,the flash should have been noticeable to anyone who was studying the moon with the naked eye at the time.It looked like a small pinpoint of light when this blog reviewed the video.
On the same date,the earth was also being pelted with numerous meteoroid impacts,as detected by all-sky cameras of NASA and the University of Western Ontario,described by NASA's Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office as a short duration cluster of material that the earth and moon were traveling through together.It is a region of small rocks and dust the earth-moon system will travel through again the same time next year.
Cooke believes the lunar impact and the Chelyabinsk event in Russia in February 2013 may be related,both caused by passing through the same rocky,dusty region between the earth and the asteroid belt.The Chelyabinsk event,however,was 100,000 times more powerful than the lunar explosion;it damaged buildings and injured more than 1500 souls.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite will search for the new impact crater when it passes over that region of the moon again.The crater could be up to 66 feet wide.If the crater is found,it will help validate ground impact models of meteoroids.
Also,such knowledge could be useful to any future astronauts who may be spending extended periods on the lunar surface,for their own safety.The moon gets a lot of impacts because it lacks an atmosphere to vaporise meteoroids.
Showing posts with label Chelyabinsk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chelyabinsk. Show all posts
Friday, May 17, 2013
Friday, February 15, 2013
The Russian Meteorite and the Asteroid:Complete Details
An explosion that had the force of a nuclear weapon occurred over Chelyabinsk,Russia Friday morning,injuring more than 1,000 people,as a 10 ton meteorite blew up in the earth's atmosphere.The space rock,a chunk of a comet or asteroid,was about 49 feet wide and traveling at a speed of at least 33,000 miles an hour when it disintegrated,resulting in a sun-like fireball and destructive shock waves.
The meteorite broke into pieces 18-32 miles above the ground over the Ural Mountains city of about a million people about 930 miles east of Moscow.Some of the fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Cherbakul,leaving a 26 foot wide crater in the ice.
Over 4,000 buildings were damaged in the Chelyabinsk area,including 6 hospitals and 12 schools.Most of the damage was in the form of shattered windows from the sonic boom the explosion created,but the roof of a zinc factory partially collapsed as well.School had just opened when the meteorite hit at 9:20 am local time.Flying glass injured 258 students.
Around 1100 people received medical treatment,and 48 of them were hospitalised.The broken windows will expose area residents to the region's bitter cold,which dips below zero Fahrenheit at night.
Chelyabinsk is 3,000 miles west of Tunguska,Siberia,site of a 1908 cataclysm caused by a 10 megaton explosion of a space rock.That blast flattened some 80 million trees and was the largest recorded explosion of a space object.
NASA scientist Jim Green said that fireballs happen once a day or so,but go unseen because they are over the ocean or remote areas.An event of the magnitude of the Chelyabinsk blast happens about once every 10 years.
In a separate and unrelated incident Friday afternoon,asteroid D-14 made a near-earth visit at 2:25 pm EST,coming within the geosynchronous orbit of 22,236 miles.That means it was closer to the earth than weather satellites.The asteroid is about 150 feet wide,or three times as large as the Chelyabinsk object.
Scientists said they would study the asteroid with radar to determine how fast it was spinning and perhaps its composition.It was invisible to the naked eye.
The meteorite broke into pieces 18-32 miles above the ground over the Ural Mountains city of about a million people about 930 miles east of Moscow.Some of the fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Cherbakul,leaving a 26 foot wide crater in the ice.
Over 4,000 buildings were damaged in the Chelyabinsk area,including 6 hospitals and 12 schools.Most of the damage was in the form of shattered windows from the sonic boom the explosion created,but the roof of a zinc factory partially collapsed as well.School had just opened when the meteorite hit at 9:20 am local time.Flying glass injured 258 students.
Around 1100 people received medical treatment,and 48 of them were hospitalised.The broken windows will expose area residents to the region's bitter cold,which dips below zero Fahrenheit at night.
Chelyabinsk is 3,000 miles west of Tunguska,Siberia,site of a 1908 cataclysm caused by a 10 megaton explosion of a space rock.That blast flattened some 80 million trees and was the largest recorded explosion of a space object.
NASA scientist Jim Green said that fireballs happen once a day or so,but go unseen because they are over the ocean or remote areas.An event of the magnitude of the Chelyabinsk blast happens about once every 10 years.
In a separate and unrelated incident Friday afternoon,asteroid D-14 made a near-earth visit at 2:25 pm EST,coming within the geosynchronous orbit of 22,236 miles.That means it was closer to the earth than weather satellites.The asteroid is about 150 feet wide,or three times as large as the Chelyabinsk object.
Scientists said they would study the asteroid with radar to determine how fast it was spinning and perhaps its composition.It was invisible to the naked eye.
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