On 22nd of December a small rock fell and burst in China skies

Because 2020 could not be bad enough: after a world Covid-19 pandemic, earthquakes in Croatia and Chile and deaths of some of the most iconic sports men as Kobe Bryant, Diego Armando Maradona and Paolo Rossi, it only had miss an asteroid... and that's it!! On 22nd of December , at 23:23 UTC United States military satellites revealed an explosion over the Qinghai region, in mid-south China.

An asteroid, unknown till this event, fell in Earth atmosphere and burst over China skies, approximately at 35,5 km height from the ground, with a 13,6 m/s speed releasing a 9,7 kilotons of energy in the atmosphere, as 60% of the Hiroshima bomb energy. Fortunately there is no victims, even cause the asteroid was so small: about 7 meters diameter, similar to that fell in Bering Sea in 2018, always in December month.

     The airburst point and points were some fragments could be. Photo Credit: INAF

Analyzing its mass, density and speed, probably it could easily come from the Main Belt, the asteroids zone between Mars and Jupiter and it could own to the well-knows Near Erath Object category, a group of asteroids that own an orbit that intersect the Earth one and, rarely, some of this asteroids pass close to our planet (but there are no danger and the possibility that a big one of these hit us is very remote, close to 0,0000.... % most of times)

Here some video of that moments... 

See you next time