A meteoroid as Seen from the Space Station
A meteoroid as Seen from the Space Station https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/11035721/Paolo-Nespoli-ESA-meteoroid_lq.jpg 3360 1776 Asteroid Day https://asteroidday-uploads.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/11035721/Paolo-Nespoli-ESA-meteoroid_lq.jpg
This article was originally written by the European Space Agency. Continue reading via ESA.int, here.
A series of night-time photos were taken by ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli on 5 November around 22:33 GMT, here shown in a time-lapse with a 1-second interval, while the Space Station was flying from the southern Atlantic Ocean over to Kazakhstan. Paolo was lucky enough to capture a fast fireball falling to Earth over the Atlantic Ocean, off the South Africa west coast — look closely between 00:07 and 00:08 seconds at upper right in this video.
A fireball is basically a very bright meteoroid — a small bit of natural “space rock” — entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning brighter than the background stars. This particular meteoroid was moving much faster than typical, with an estimated speed of around 40 km/s, according to experts working on near-Earth objects (NEOs) in ESA’s Space Situational Awareness Programme.
Continue reading via ESA.int, here.
