The 25m-wide meteorite grazes the Earth on the night of Halloween

The meteorite early warning system of the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) discovered a meteorite 25m in diameter that grazed the Earth on the night of October 31.

The Halloween meteorite flew across the Earth last night after being identified by NASA's new space surveillance system called Scout five days ago, according to the Mirror.

A telescope in Hawaii detected the object for the first time on October 25. Data uploaded to the Scout system allows the software to predict meteorite routes within 10 minutes, including the route to collide with the Earth. Scout immediately informed the other three telescopes to continue observing, eliminating the possibilities, and finally confirming that the meteorite would fly safely across Earth.

The 25m-diameter meteorite was discovered by NASA's early Scout warning system.(Photo: Mirror).

The Halloween meteorite has a width of up to 25m, grazing the Earth at a distance of 498,897km, about 1.3 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

"When a telescope first detects moving objects, all you know is a tiny dot moving in the sky. You have no information how far it is," astronomer Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who runs the Scout program, said. "The more telescopes you direct into an object, the more data you can get, so be sure of its size and direction. But sometimes you don't have much time to make observations. there".

Scout is designed to track objects near Earth and potentially collide with planets so that NASA can act in time. The system is in the testing phase and meteorite Halloween is the first case of Scout detection. This system will officially go into operation later this year.

"If you know in advance, you can redirect the meteorite with a small explosion when it's about billions of kilometers before crashing into the Earth , " said Ed Lu, head of the B612 meteorite hazard prevention organization. to speak.