A bright fireball crosses the sky over Russia, causing a boom – BGR

It was only last week that NASA publicly announced its intention to improve its tracking and detection systems for small objects near Earth, and now a video from Russia shows exactly why such a effort is so important. The video shows a fairly large fireball lingering in the atmosphere on June 21, causing an incredibly bright flash that was visible for at least a handful of Russian cities.

The fireball, which was detected by NASA, was the most powerful visit to an object close to Earth since last December, producing an estimated impact energy of 2.8 kilotons when She hit the atmosphere of our planet.

According to International Meteorological Organization, the fireball was reported by observers in the Russian cities of Kursk, Lipetsk, Voronzeh and Orel. With the bright flash, which was clearly visible even though it was early in the morning, the object created a big boom that was heard several miles away.

The fireball and the smoky trail that she left behind were captured by several different cameras, with a conveniently placed dashboard placing her entrance:

According to NASA calculations, the fireball entered at a speed of 14 km / s, or about 32,200 miles per hour. The fast-moving space rock caused no injury, and it is still unknown if any material of the object avoided total incineration and did it on the ground.

Surprisingly, the fireball was actually big enough to be detected by high flying weather satellites. A video showing the faint puff of smoke as the asteroid reaches its end in the Earth's atmosphere has gone around, offering some perspective on the size of the rock compared to the surrounding area:

It should be noted that the object had not been detected by scientists before his arrival, mainly because of its small size. With regard to near-Earth objects, the main objective of NASA at this time is to develop a system capable of detecting space rocks that pose a serious threat to the planet and its inhabitants. A rock of this size is not exactly something that scientists worry about, but it's a timely reminder that our solar system still has a lot of surprises for us.