NASA has launched a new website to share details of meteor explosion events as recorded by U.S. military sensors on secretive spacecraft, kicking off the project with new details of last month's fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia. <\/p>\n
The new \"Fireball and Bolide Reports\" website, overseen by NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, debuted Friday (March 1) with its first entry: a table with a chronological data summary of the Russian meteor explosion of Feb. 15 gleaned from U.S. Government sensor data. Scientists are calling the event a \"superbolide,\" taken from the term \"bolide\" typically used for fireballs created by meteors. <\/p>\n
Sharing the information publicly is part of a renewed collaboration between the U.S. military and the scientific community. <\/p>\n
\"And what better way to kick this site off than the Chelyabinsk superbolide the most energetic recognized-fireball event since Tunguska in 1908,\" said Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He is also manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. <\/p>\n
\"This website is meant to be the vehicle for future reports of fireballs\/bolides as seen by U.S. government sensors,\" Yeomans told SPACE.com. \"This is the first posting of its kind on this site. Future data on bright fireballs will be added to this table. We won't capture every fireball event only the unusually bright ones,\" he said. <\/p>\n
\"I consider this a major step forward since these fireball events are by far the most frequent impactors into the Earth's atmosphere,\" Yeomans said. \"And these reports will go a long way toward defining the annual flux of small Earth impactors.\" [Russian Meteor Explosion Explained (Infographic)] <\/p>\n
New Russian meteor details <\/p>\n
The Feb. 15 Russian meteor event is the first entry on this new site, and it provides the following information about the fireball: <\/p>\n
Time of maximum brightness: 03:20:33 GMT on Feb. 15 <\/p>\n
Geographic location of maximum brightness: Latitude: 54.8 deg. N Longitude: 61.1 deg. E <\/p>\n
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NASA Fireball Website Launches with New Russian Meteor Explosion Details<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NASA has launched a new website to share details of meteor explosion events as recorded by U.S. military sensors on secretive spacecraft, kicking off the project with new details of last month's fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Continue reading