Meteoroid skims earth’s atmosphere, flying low over Germany

In the early hours of Tuesday, September 22, a meteoroid was spotted flying over Northern Germany and the Netherlands, getting as low as 91 kilometres before “bouncing” back into space.

Meteoroid spotted in Germany

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Thursday that the meteor had been spotted by cameras in the Global Meteor Network, and explained that most meteoroids disintegrate as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

(1/2) An earthgrazer above N Germany and the Netherlands was observed by 8 #globalmeteornetwork cameras on Sept 22, 03:53:35 UTC. It entered the atmosphere at 34.1 km/s, reached the lowest altitude of ~91 km and bounced back into space!@westernuScience @IMOmeteors @amsmeteors pic.twitter.com/5EgRivdcsu
— Denis Vida (@meteordoc) September 22, 2020

However, this meteoroid had a lucky escape, grazing the edges of our atmosphere before returning to space. It got as low as 91 kilometres away from Earth - significantly closer than any orbiting satellites - before continuing with its journey.

The meteoroid entered the atmosphere over Germany, reaching its lowest point over the Dutch province of Friesland. The ESA noted that it was exceedingly rare that meteoroids were captured so clearly on camera.

Here is a preliminary map of the #fireball trajectory.
600+ km trajectory!
Note that for this special case, the "start" and "end" points are basically where it appeared above and disappeared below the horizon for the Dutch camera stations!@MVerstraaten @cgbassa @Doenker pic.twitter.com/6KWf2gd6Pw
— Dr Marco Langbroek (@Marco_Langbroek) September 23, 2020

This article first appeared on IamExpat in the Netherlands.

Meteoroid skims earth’s atmosphere, flying low over Germany

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