Man spots asteroid that evaded detection hours before it slammed into Earth's atmosphere

dailystar.co.uk:

asteroid hurtling towards Earth just two hours before it collided with our atmosphere in a rare incident.Astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky first spotted the 'refrigerator-sized' asteroid catalogued as 2022 EB5 which using the Schmidt telescope at Hungary’s Piszkéstető Observatory on March 11.The space rock was reportedly sighted at around 19:24pm before it collided with Earth's atmosphere to the north of Iceland just two hours later.

Some observers on the north side of Iceland reported seeing a bright flash in the sky around the estimated time of impact.Incidents like this one are rare as they have only happened four times before with the 2008 TC3, 2014 AA, 2018 LA and 2019 MO asteroids.However, the rarity of these incidents serves as proof of how technological advancements within the last fifteen years have been able to keep a watchful eye over Earth's close approaches.

The news comes after an asteroid thought to be five times the size of Big Ben sped up towards Earth's orbit on Friday, March 11.

The rock named 2015 DR215 was first sighted on February 18, 2015, and has an estimated diameter of 220m to 490m, according to NASA's Earth Close Approaches list.Luckily it is not deemed hazardous nor expected to crash directly into the planet.To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.If it were to enter the Earth's atmosphere, however, it would leave a city-sized dent on our planet, even in its smallest possible size.Fortunately for us, the closest the massive space rock will pass by Earth is 4.2million miles away – which is not a lot in space terms.For perspective, the Sun is 92million miles away, some 22 times further than the monster asteroid was..