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This is a list of asteroids that have impacted Earth after discovery and orbit calculation that predicted the impact in advance. As of December 2024 [update] , all of the asteroids with predicted impacts were under 5 m (16 ft) in size that were discovered just hours before impact, and burned up in the atmosphere as meteors .
As sky surveys improve, smaller and smaller asteroids are regularly being discovered. Scientists estimate that several dozen asteroids in the 6–12 m (20–39 ft) size range fly by Earth at a distance closer than the moon every year, but only a fraction of these are actually detected.
Such very small asteroids much more commonly impact Earth than larger ones, but they make little damage. Missing them therefore has limited consequences. Much more importantly, ground-based telescopes are blind to most of the asteroids which impact the day side of the planet and will miss even large ones
An asteroid capable of flattening a mid-sized city could potentially collide with Earth eight years from now, as its orbit around the sun briefly intersects the path of our planet. Named 2024 YR4 ...
These asteroids, while smaller than the dinosaur killer, struck our planet about 25,000 years apart. They left miles-long craters in the Mid-Atlantic Chesapeake Bay and Siberia: the fourth- and ...
Specifically, an asteroid is a PHA if its Earth minimum orbital intersection distance (MOID) is <0.05 AU and its absolute magnitude is 22 or brighter. [2] The concept of PHA is intended to replace the now abandoned strict definition of ECA (Earth-crossing asteroid) which existed for a few years.
Stony asteroids with a diameter of 4 meters (13 ft) enter Earth's atmosphere about once a year. [22] Asteroids with a diameter of 7 meters enter the atmosphere about every 5 years with as much kinetic energy as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (approximately 16 kilotons of TNT), but the air burst is reduced to just 5 kilotons. [ 22 ]
These are lists of asteroids, e.g. by discoverer or by number. See list of minor planets for an overview and numbering and naming conventions.