Scientists have detected an asteroid that flew over the German capital before it burst into flames over the Earth. It has been possible to predict a collision with a celestial body only 8 times in history.
The asteroid, named 2024 BXI, was first discovered by Hungarian astronomer Christian Sarnecki. He identified the space rock using the 60-centimeter Schmidt telescope. Shortly after its discovery, NASA gave a detailed forecast of where and when the object would fall.
“Attention: A tiny asteroid will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nenngausen shortly at 1:32 a.m. CET. Observers will see it if it’s clear,” NASA said on Twitter on the night of January 21.
In the city of Leipzig in northern Germany, a CCTV camera captured this bright meteor.
Denis Vida, a postdoctoral researcher at Western University in Canada, noted that the asteroid, which was about 1 meter wide before the collision, probably began to break up about 50 kilometers west of Berlin and could have dropped several meteorites to the ground.
NV Techno wrote that the day before, specialists managed to gain access to a container with samples of the Bennu asteroid. It is considered the most dangerous of the known asteroids.
