Why on June 30th?

It was established to celebrate June 30th as the day of asteroids. It’s understandable to celebrate Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day, birthdays, Christmas, Easter… but Asteroid Day? Indeed, why do we celebrate Asteroid Day?

The most powerful explosion that occurred on Earth happened on 30/06/1908. Then, an asteroid, meteoroid, or comet as it entered Earth’s atmosphere exploded and broke into pieces. The explosion occurred over Tunguska in Siberia, and it had the energy of several megatons of TNT. For example, 1 ton of TNT (approximately equal to 4184 joules) is the energy released during an explosion. It was like having 1000 atomic bombs of Hiroshima falling together!

Artistic representation of the event in Tunguska, Siberia.
The explosion flattened approximately 80 million trees. Trees (Wikipedia). It is said that at least 3 people died.

A very informative video is the next one, showing another meteorite that fell in Siberia in 2013. The meteorite of 2013 was very small, as they say in the video.

We’ve all heard about the meteorite whose impact on Earth caused the extinction of the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago. We understand very well that it is imperative to protect our planet from similar events. We want, for example, to learn if we can deflect from its orbit any large object that is threateningly approaching Earth.

Watch a very informative video that compares the size of these rocks.

So, World Asteroid Day is the day we realize that there are many threatening objects out there that may collide with Earth. Something must be done, isn’t it? But what? We don’t want to be at risk.

DART – space billiards?!

We made it in October 2022!

Ο DART The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) had a head-on collision with the smaller asteroid of the binary system. BinaryOn October 11, 2022, NASA announced that the mission was successful and that the impact of DART on Didymos had managed to shorten its orbit around Dimorphos by half an hour.

June 30th was established as World Asteroid Day in 2014, among others, by physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking and astrophysicist & guitarist of the famous English band Queen, Dr. Brian May. Α! And musician Vangelis Papathanassiou has become asteroid 6354 Vangelis!

Let’s hope that the event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs will not be repeated!