"It exploded in a flash
nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," said Bill
Cooke, of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.
NASA astronomers have
been monitoring the moon for the past eight years, looking for
explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. It's part of a
program to find new fields of space debris that could hit Earth. NASA
says it sees hundreds of detectable lunar meteoroid impacts a year.
None however can match
the size of the explosion they say they saw March 17. NASA says the
meteoroid was about 40 kilograms and less than a meter wide, and it hit
the moon's surface at 56,000 mph. It glowed like a 4th magnitude star,
NASA says, thanks to an explosion equivalent to 5 tons of TNT.
"It jumped right out at me, it was so bright," said Ron Suggs of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Cooke says Earth was
pelted by meteoroids at about the same time, but they hit the moon
because it has no atmosphere to protect it.
"We'll be keeping an eye
out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-Moon
system passes through the same region of space," Cooke said.
If you're wondering how
there can be an explosion on the moon, without oxygen, NASA has the
answer for you. It says the flash of light comes not from any type of
combustion -- as we typically think of explosions -- but rather by the
glowing molten rock at the impact site.
Post a Comment