An asteroid lit up the sky over the Russian Federation’s Far Eastern Yakutia region in the early hours of Wednesday morning, producing a “fireball” before likely burning up completely in Earth’s atmosphere, Russian officials and scientists said.
The Ministry of Emergencies in Yakutia announced that all official institutions were placed on alert as the asteroid approached Earth, but no material damage was reported after it entered the atmosphere, reports
“Inhabitants of the Olekminsk and Lensk districts were able to observe the tail of a comet-like cosmic object and a flash in the night sky,” said the same Russian ministry.
The European Space Agency (ESA) published a message on the X social network, according to which its specialists believe that the asteroid had a diameter of 70 centimeters. It had been spotted about 12 hours before its appearance in the terrestrial sky and entered the atmosphere at 01:15 local time.
“Thanks to observations made by astronomers around the world, our alert system was able to predict this impact with an accuracy of +/- 10 seconds,” ESA announced.
Astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen’s University in Belfast, quoted by New Scientist magazine, said before the appearance of that “fireball” that the asteroid was “a small one, but nevertheless it was going to be quite spectacular, visible at distances of hundreds kilometers”.
