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Last week, a meteoroid exploded over the city of Lipetsk, Russia, illuminating the sky with a bright flash. While some looked at the sky with wonderful enchantment, others worry that we did not see it happen, according to a Purdue press release released Thursday.
NASA is part of a global effort to detect foreign objects atmosphere of space, but usually they only see larger objects. Meteoroids less than 20 feet in diameter are less likely to cause damage than their larger counterparts, so it is rarely necessary to monitor them.
"We did not see this coming because it was too small," Jay Melosh, a professor of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue, said in the release. "The meteoroid that exploded on Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 and caused a lot of ground damage, was about 60 feet wide."
While incoming asteroids of this size worry ground people who are crushed, what worries scientists is that the shockwave of the explosion is comparable to a small nuclear explosion
Asteroids of this size are quite common and reach the surface of the Earth about once a year. an object of this size poses no real danger to people on the ground, it's more an opportunity for the space enthusiast collector to pick up pieces of debris, Melosh said in the release.
The meteorite has disintegrated before reaching the surface of the Earth, but small fragments are found near the explosion, often sought after by meteorite hunters.
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