A fragment of a meteor that hit an uninhabited mountainous area in Germany was recently presented at a scientific conference * The US is considering establishing a special unit in its space command, which will track
"rock" of this kind and you will be warned against them
Dr. Noah Brosh
The US Space Command is considering establishing a special unit that will collect data related to the impact of natural space bodies on Earth. In this section, an event was reported in which a celestial, rocky body, which suddenly emerged from space, exploded over the Mediterranean Sea. One of the commanders of the American space arm said at the time that due to a misunderstanding about the nature of the event and the solid body - a too severe reaction, a wrong "pressing of a button", could have caused a great disaster in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin whose leaders and rulers are currently under a lot of tension.
Similar phenomena occur with relatively high frequency. Some of them may cause real damage to property and human life, as a result of damage to a populated area. This situation created the need to examine the question: whether a unit of this type, established within a military framework, might actually be useful.
For this purpose, a study was carried out, the results of which were recently submitted to the Space Command. Experts participated in its preparation and not only from the military field, but also from the equivalent body to the "Home Front Command" in Israel, which is responsible in the US for the peace of the civilian population, and scientists who specialize in the study of celestial bodies - meteors, meteorites and asteroids - that could hit the Earth.
The feasibility study (regarding the possibility of an impact from space) examined the nature of the celestial body and one of the alternatives that were put forward: a proposal to establish within the same state-of-the-art unit also an "Information Center for Natural Injuries". Another possibility: to unite part of the American strategic command with the home front command - and the unified body will handle the vulnerability of the natural bodies and also ballistic missile attacks on the USA.
The main problem that remains is: lack of knowledge about the nature of the various bodies. At an international conference held at the beginning of August in Berlin, results from several studies were presented. The main thing: evidence regarding some of the space bodies - those that may come dangerously close to the Earth but are not 'solid rock', but rather a collection of smaller bodies, actually dust or brittle stone fragments whose particles are held together by self-gravity.
Hitting a collection of stones and dust is very different from hitting a solid and hard body - but even the attempt to destroy such a brittle body should be handled differently from shelling the solid body.
The head of the department for the study of meteors at the Czech National Institute of Astronomy, Dr. Pavel Šforni, told a conference in Berlin about the activation of a network of surveillance cameras, following the meteoric activity. Surprisingly, this network has been operating for several decades. The Czech activity has been consolidated in recent years with similar activity held in Germany, Austria and other places in Europe. Dr. Shaforni said that the surveillance yielded an interesting discovery: a bright meteor, which was seen on April 6 this year and was captured by the web cameras. This made it possible to calculate its exact trajectory and assess its nature.
It turned out that it was a body that weighed about 500 kg. It came from the depths of space, to the Earth's atmosphere, at a speed of about 20 km per second. Most of the material in this meteorite evaporated in transit through the atmosphere. Some of it was expected to survive.
The calculations indicated the place where the fragments of the meteor fell - in a mountainous area in southern Germany.
Following the findings, a special expedition went to the place and found only one fragment of the same meteor, weighing almost 2 kg.
Later it turned out that this was the sixth meteorite in history whose trajectory was calculated with such great precision and that fragments of it were collected for research and also, that the fragments of the space rock came to us from the "asteroid belt".
A very similar path was taken by another meteorite, which was also discovered by Czech cameras and whose fragments were collected as early as April 7, 1957. The possibility of two events so similar in their details and essence therefore indicated a higher than predicted frequency of lumps of material moving along this path. And therefore also additional impacts of the space bodies of the same type are expected, probably mainly in the months of April.
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