Image of the day: NASA’s map of Earthly asteroid impact

A newly released map compiled by NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) program categorizes the impact point of every small asteroid that’s entered Earth’s atmosphere. The data was gathered by US government sensors from 1994 to 2013 and is visually depicted across the entire globe. Yellow dots represent daytime impacts and the blue dots are nighttime impacts.

The chart tells us that a total of 556 separate instances of impact had occurred resulting in a fireball or “bolide.” This is because the majority of asteroids disintegrate in the atmosphere and are thereby harmless; a notable exception in recent history was the Chelyabinsk meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia on February 15, 2013, and exploded at a height of 29.7 km with a kinetic force equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT. 

The Cheylyabinsk incident is one of the reasons NASA has increased its asteroid detection, characterization, and mitigation activities budget by a factor of 10 in the last five years. Discovering and characterizing hazardous asteroids to protect Earth is a high priority for the space agency. To that extent, NASA is developing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) to identify, redirect, and send astronauts to explore an asteroid.

Source: NASA