This is not a shooting star you want to make a wish on, friends.
On Feb. 6 at about 2 pm, a massive fireball was over the South Atlantic Ocean around 1,000 kilometers away from the coast of Brazil. However, upon its initial impact, the event went largely unnoticed. In fact, the event was not even really publicized until about two weeks later on Feb. 18, when NASA Employee Ron Baalke tweeted about the incident. The event is the largest fireball impact to occur since the Chelyabinsk Blast that occurred on Feb. 15 in 2013, when a meteor crashed over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring over 1,150 people in its wake. Thankfully this recent impact was not nearly as large. For comparison, the Chelyabinsk Blast released about 450 kilotons of energy when it impacted –enough to break windows and cause some outstanding damage- while this recent meteor explosion only released about 13 kilotons of energy; enough for a good scare, but not much else.
The incident is recorded on NASA’s Fireballs and Bollides page, where you can view just how much of an impact that this event had, keep yourself updated on recent fireball reports and view those that have occurred in the past.
While we look at these events as being rare and frightening, events such as this recent fireball impact and the Chelyabinsk Blast are actually the exception, and meteors are not actually as much of an anomaly as we make them out to be. Everyday around 100 tons of meteoroids break through Earth’s atmosphere, but most burn up before they even have much of a chance to make an impact.