Largest atmospheric impact recorded since Chelyabinsk bolide

After the initial assessment, it became clear that the impact has taken place due to a chunk of space rock around 5 to 7 meters wide.

The meteor was certainly less powerful than the one that rocked Chelyabinsk in 2013 – it impacted the surface of the Earth with the energy equivalent of roughly 13,000 tons of TNT. The incident occurred February 6 off the coast of Brazil.

The event was only picked up by military monitoring instruments like satellites and seismic monitors and sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for analysis, according to Slate.

It is assumed that the meteor was 16-23 feet wide and was mostly destroyed by the atmospheric impact, with any surviving small pieces likely to have fallen into the ocean.

“Impacts like this happen several times per year on average, with most going unseen”.

If you’ve got a gut feeling that 13,000 tons of extraterrestrial TNT feels like something you should have heard about a while ago, maybe even before it actually struck the planet, that’s a fair instinct. The event itself is notable because it is the largest atmospheric impact recorded since the famous Chelyabinsk bolide that exploded over Russian Federation in 2013, causing widespread structural damage and injuries to the city with a population of 1 million. “An event with an energy equivalent of one thousand tons of TNT explosives is termed a kiloton”.

NASA has released public data on the fireball, although it is still too early to draw any conclusions regarding the scale of the meteor with what is now known, RT reports. “But I don’t think it would’ve done any real damage”.

“Objects causing fireballs are usually not large enough to survive passage through the Earth’s atmosphere intact, although fragments, or meteorites, are sometimes recovered on the ground”, read the program’s website.

In August past year, Nasa was forced to quell rumours that a huge asteroid was due to strike the Earth.

NASA tracks thousands of near-Earth objects, and around 1,600 are regarded as potentially hazardous.

The space agency’s Near-Earth Object Observations Programme said there have been no asteroids or comets observed that would impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future.