Meteors strike the Moon and the Earth regularly, often impacting with cataclysmic results. Even the Moon itself may have been created through a monumental impact in Earth's early history.
The meteor that hit the lunar surface on March 17, estimated at 88 pounds, created the brightest explosion seen on the lunar surface since NASA began monitoring such events.
"It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we've ever seen before," Bill Cooke from NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said.
The Earth has also seen its own significant impact events, even in recent history.
The most famous of these is the Tunguska Event of 1908. That year, a meteor or comet, estimated to be between three to six miles across, exploded over a remote forest in Siberia, knocking down 80 million trees covering an area over 800 square miles.
Russia's Chelyabinsk region was struck by a meteor in February which injured over a thousand people. The object which caused that event was calculated to measure 55 feet across.
A meteor struck a mountain in Norway just after 2 a.m. June 7, 2006. The energy from the resulting explosion was about the same as 100 to 500 pounds of TNT.
"That's still substantial," said Peter Brown of the Western Meteor Physics Group.
Most meteors break up in the atmosphere due to heating from air friction, but the resulting debris could still be quite dangerous. In 1947, 9,000 iron meteorite fragments weighing over 100 tons rained down on the ground in Siberia.
The Great Daylight Fireball of August 10, 1972 was not an impact, put a near-miss that could have resulted in devastating consequences. On that day, a meteor was seen streaking north over the Rocky Mountains, headed toward Canada. The automobile-sized object burned through our atmosphere, but never hit the ground. Had this meteorite struck the Earth, it would have exploded with the force of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
On May 16, the NASA All-Sky Fireball Network recorded a bright, 12-ounce meteor breaking up over the skies of Northwest Georgia. Program managers estimate this meteoroid entered the atmosphere at 49,000 MPH and was slowed to 22,000 MPH before it shattered 22 miles above the ground.
The Earth is quite often hit by the rocks from space much larger than the one that hit the Moon, but watching the impact on the Moon still makes for great science.
