A 'hypersonic' fireball hits Australia
A large meteor lit up the night skies as it passed over the south coast of Australia on Tuesday, May 21. According to NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the meteor entered the atmosphere at 11.5km per second or 25,724mph. The meteor then partially broke up and crash landed in the waters of the Great Australian Bight bay some 186 miles (300km) west-southwest of Mount Gambier. Before this happened, however, the fireball released enough energy in the sky to equal a “small nuclear bomb”.
Asteroid with its own moon flies by Earth
An asteroid zipping by the Earth this weekend is so big, it has its own moon. Asteroid (66391) 1999 KW4 is a binary system - two asteroids orbiting each other. The larger is 1.5km across and resembles a spinning top or a muffin, and the smaller measures 500m.
Because of its size, 1999 KW4 is classified as potentially hazardous by the Minor Planet Center. But it poses no threat to Earth this time around, and will fly by just over 5 million kilometres away - close on an interplanetary scale, but far enough away we don't need to worry.
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