It was a cosmic touchdown.
The Super Bowl had competition in the skies on Sunday as a small asteroid slammed into Earth’s atmosphere over Europe just after being detected by a Hungarian astronomer.
Professional asteroid hunter Krisztián Sárneczky spotted the hurtling space rock mere hours before it treated Europe to a fireball over northern France, above Rouen, the Normandy region’s capital.
It was just the seventh time astronomers have seen an incoming meteoroid, the European Space Agency (ESA) noted, calling it “a sign of the .”
The meter-sized asteroid — twice as big as a Super Bowl trophy — wowed observers, many of them posting footage on social media.
As soon as Sárneczky’s find was verified, the ESA and other institutions began predicting when and where it would likely arrive. It hit, as expected, at about 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, or about 3 a.m. in Europe.
The asteroid, Sar2667, was too small to pose a threat.
“When small, harmless asteroids impact Earth they only create meteors or ‘shooting stars’ when they ,” NASA Asteroid Watch said on Twitter. “Tiny asteroids like this one pose no threat to Earth, but they are an excellent exercise of Earth’s planetary defense capabilities that find and track asteroids and accurately predict such impacts.”
At least streamed into the American Meteor Society from England, the Netherlands, Belgium and France after the space rock exploded in a flash of light.
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