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Asteroid COLLIDES with Earth above Iceland just two hours after being discovered

The asteroid, known as 2022 EB5, collided with Earth above Iceland at 21:22 GMT (16:22 ET) on Friday, only two hours after it was discovered by an astronomer

On Friday, March 11, a minor asteroid collided with the Earth above Iceland, only two hours after it was discovered by an astronomer. The space rock, known as 2022 EB5, is thought to have mostly burned up in our planet's atmosphere. However, even if it had collided with the Earth, it would have caused little to no damage because it was only 10-feet-wide (3 meters), about half the size of a giraffe.

Around the time that 2022 EB5 raced across the sky at 11 miles per second (18.5 km/s) between Greenland and Norway, several residents in Iceland reported hearing a boom or seeing a flash of light. Although there has been no evidence of meteorites, the International Meteor Organization is hunting for anyone who may have seen something. The space rock became the fifth asteroid to be found before it collided with Earth's atmosphere north of Iceland at 21:22 GMT (16:22 ET).

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The first was 2008 TC3, an 80-tonne, and 13-feet-wide (4.1 meters) object that burst above Sudan's Nubian Desert in October 2008. The asteroid yielded 600 meteorites, which were eventually retrieved.

The second was a near-Earth asteroid named 2014 AA that entered the Earth's atmosphere above Venezuela in 2014, while the third called 2018 LA struck four years later and left debris near the Botswana-South Africa border.

2019 MO, the fourth asteroid to be seen before it collided with Earth, exploded in a harmless 5-kiloton-equivalent explosion off the coast of Puerto Rico around two years ago.

The newest asteroid was observed by Hungarian astronomer Krisztián Sárneczky, who is based at a site that is part of the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, just two hours before it entered the Earth's atmosphere.

The asteroid was not visible earlier due to its size, according to Weizmann Institute of Science astronomer Dr David Polishook. He is also part of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project that tries to deflect a giant space asteroid.

"It was a tiny rock. It reflects just a little light from the sun — it is hard to identify it," Polishook explained. "The impact made no damage, falling into the sea between Norway to Iceland. However, just imagine it would have crashed a few hours earlier over Russia. With the ongoing crisis, would Russia have identified it as an asteroid or as a rocket, and returned fire with its own missiles?"

"A few hours ago, newly-discovered #asteroid 2022 EB5 collided with Earth near Iceland at a speed of 18.5 km/s. This asteroid was too small to cause damage," tweeted orbit simulation specialist Tony Dunn on Friday. 

The most recent big asteroid collision occurred in 2013 when a tiny object about 60 feet (19 meters) in diameter detonated over Chelyabinsk, Russia. It slammed into the Earth's atmosphere with the equivalent energy of 500,000 tonnes of TNT, causing massive damage and injuring over 1,600 people. At 41,600 mph, the fireball collided with the Earth, and much of it fell in a lake called Chebarkul. Asteroids are considered one of the world's most hazardous natural disasters, especially because there is currently no method to prevent them.