The asteroid hit the earth at noon today, with a diameter of only about 1 meter and no real threat.
CTOnews.com, February 13, Beijing time early this morning, the Pizcesto Observatory in Concord, Hungary, released a newly discovered near-Earth asteroid, currently named after the internal code Sar2667. Sar is the first three letters of the surname of the discoverer Christian Salnitsky.
Preliminary orbital analysis shows that its perigee altitude is only about 3540 km, far less than the earth's average radius of 6380 km, which means it is bound to collide with the earth! However, because its diameter is estimated to be only about 1 meter, it will not pose any substantial threat to the earth.
CTOnews.com learned that the asteroid is expected to enter the Earth's atmosphere near the English Channel at 02:59 UTC on February 13, 11:00 Beijing time today. As it is not yet dawn, a big bright fireball may be seen in northern France, Luxembourg, southern England, most of Belgium, and even the Netherlands.
According to Wu Weiren, chief designer of the China Lunar Exploration Project of the National Space Administration, "We are now ready to carry out a defense mission against small celestial bodies, that is, aiming at a small celestial body of tens of meters, which flew in from outside Mars. After flying over, we predict that it will pose a serious threat to the earth, so we need to launch a probe, detect it, and determine its orbit after exploration. Then we hope to be able to launch an impactor at about 10 million kilometers and then change its orbit. This is what we are going to implement in the next 10 years. "