Thule Meteor

[Mallette]

An unusual, but hardly unprecedented, event. What IS rather strange is the silence of the USAF on this event.

 

https://theaviationist.com/2018/08/03/report-meteor-made-2-1-kiloton-explosion-over-air-force-space-command-base-thule-Greenland/

 

Dave

[T2K]

 

What do you think about the Chinese plan to 'catch' an asteroid?

 

Keith

[JJkizak]

As Mr. Spock says, "Very interesting".

JJK

[CECAA850]

1 hour ago, JJkizak said:

As Mr. Spock says, "Very interesting".

JJK

That was Arte Johnson.

[JJkizak]

2 hours ago, CECAA850 said:

That was Arte Johnson.

 

My bad. I was in Thule for 1 year as a civilian and visited the BMEWS site. The public address system was by RCA and the quality was outstanding.

They used it to get parts instead of paperwork and the parts were delivered by vehicles in the tunnels, of which the whole 1.5 mile site was connected. Supply had 30 minutes to deliver the part I believe. And you better have the green ID card hanging in plain site on your person or the air police would be on your back with automatic weapons. They really didn't want to be there for a year.

 

JJK

[Jeff Matthews]

On 8/6/2018 at 11:18 AM, Mallette said:

What IS rather strange is the silence of the USAF on this event.

Does the USAF routinely talk about these events?

 

 

[Mallette]

24 minutes ago, Jeff Matthews said:

Does the USAF routinely talk about these events?

In the case of a 2.1 kiloton explosion in the vicinity of a highly classified national defense asset, which some credible sources have said might have been construed as a first strike resulting in nuclear retaliation, it is not routine and, IMHO, yes, they should talk about it.

Dave

[Jeff Matthews]

1 hour ago, Mallette said:

In the case of a 2.1 kiloton explosion in the vicinity of a highly classified national defense asset, which some credible sources have said might have been construed as a first strike resulting in nuclear retaliation, it is not routine and, IMHO, yes, they should talk about it.

Dave

Maybe so.  I'm not familiar with any protocol on this.  For all I know, protocol means, "let other agencies handle it."

 

Are you suspecting cover-up of a military strike?

[Mallette]

No, as there is no evidence for it. However, would like to hear it officially ruled out as we have a right to know such things since our butts depend on it.

Dave

[Jeff Matthews]

16 minutes ago, Mallette said:

No, as there is no evidence for it. However, would like to hear it officially ruled out as we have a right to know such things since our butts depend on it.

Dave

On a side note, did you see the data collected for meteorites?  They record the events for ones down to 55 grams.  Interesting.

[Schu]

Maybe that's what happened to the Venezuelan President...

[Travis In Austin]

10 hours ago, CECAA850 said:

That was Arte Johnson.

But stupid.  

[Travis In Austin]

5 hours ago, Mallette said:

No, as there is no evidence for it. However, would like to hear it officially ruled out as we have a right to know such things since our butts depend on it.

Dave

What am I missing?  It was 50 KM above the base, that is the mesosphere, which is where meteors burn up.

 

It was tracked upon entry into the atmosphere, it was smaller than the threshold of detection for an earth altering event.  All of THOSE sized bad boys are tracked by NASA.  This was too small to worry about, as was the one in Russia a few years ago that blew out the windows of thousands of homes and offices.  They are too small to detect until they hit the atmosphere, and at that point they can be detected with special radar, but there is nothing that can be done to react by that time.

 

Those that hit the atmosphere are tracked in real time.

 

We are right smack dab in the middle of a major meteor shower called the Perseids, you have all heard about that in the past.  Unfortunately, every once in awhile one hits the ground and it's called a meteorite. The one that his Russia 

 

Are you sure you want.to know about this stuff?

 

Join the Meteor Society, yes there is one.  

 

It is all out there, if you really want to obsess about it you can watch a live monitor of them.

 

http://www.meteorscan.com/meteor-live.html

[Travis In Austin]

Here is a map that shows all fireball events around the world for last 20 years, don't you feel much more reassured?

 

Doesn't look like Texas got any, which means we are overdue.

 

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/

[Travis In Austin]

From NASA, it comes down to funding.  The videos at bottom should answer anyone's questions on this.

 

"The NEO Observations Program operated on a budget of a few million dollars per year from fiscal year 1998 through fiscal year 2010, at which point the program budget was about $4 million. In April 2010, the President announced a new goal for NASA: a human mission to an asteroid. Consequently, the President requested, and Congress authorized in 2012, $20.4 million for an expanded NASA NEO Observations Program. The Program was again expanded in fiscal year 2014, with a budget of $40 million and again in 2016 to $50 million.

 

Current activities

 

The NEO Observations Program supports multiple detection and tracking campaigns using ground-based optical telescopes and the space-based NEOWISE mission; follow-up surveys; NEO characterization efforts; radar imaging of NEOs; data processing, analysis and management centers; technology development projects; and studies of techniques for impact mitigation. These projects are being conducted by NASA centers, other federal agencies, federally funded research and development centers, space science institutes, university researchers, and private citizens.

 

NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance maintains a Meteoroid Environment Office. Meteoroids are small remnants of asteroids and comets. When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, they are called meteors. This office, based at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, monitors the meteoroid environment and provides meteor shower forecasts to NASA spacecraft operators.

The Planetary Society’s 5 Step Plan to Prevent Asteroid Impact 
Our colleagues at the Planetary Society have produced a special series of videos within their Random Space Fact series to educate the public on planetary defense.

What is Planetary Defense?(An Intro)
How Do We Find Asteroids?(Part 1)
How Do We Know If An Asteroid is Going to Hit Earth? (Part 2)
How Do We Characterize Asteroids? (Part 3)
How to Deflect an Asteroid(Part 4)
How to Save the World from Asteroids Together (Part 5)

[Mallette]

1 hour ago, dwilawyer said:

What am I missing?  It was 50 KM above the base, that is the mesosphere, which is where meteors burn up.

I did not see that in your link. Just ran it again, set to last 24 hours, and still see 2 kiloton blast, conflicts on whether it hit ground or air burst, and such.

 

Yes, I still would like some authoritative info from a variety of credible sources. Please point to at least as many with a consistent story that it really was a non-event of an everyday meteor that all agree. I don't get into speculation or conspiracies...but I have questions until I see credible info that matches from multiple sources.

Fact is, my latest run is suddenly NOT turning up the stories from major UK and US news sources, space.com, defense news, aerospace, etc that were there when I first posted. I am going to leave this be as it has gone weird and I don't want to be associated with it. I will file it in my head as "unexplained" along with a number of other things and move on. Like a few other things, I now expect a perfectly reasonable explanation to materialize that one debates at the peril of ones personal credibility. 

 

I am posting the below from a generally credible source that echoes most of the suddenly disappearing posts. 

 

Dave

 

[Travis In Austin]

2 hours ago, Mallette said:

I did not see that in your link. Just ran it again, set to last 24 hours, and still see 2 kiloton blast, conflicts on whether it hit ground or air burst, and such.

This event occurred on July 25.

 

The lay reporting on this has been extremely poor.  The "reports" (which are pretty much repeats of the JPL Twitter post) use the word "struck", 'hit" etc.  The explosion occurred 43 Kilometers above the earth, that is right in the AMS screen shot you just posted.  "Greenland sensors at an  altitude of 43.3 kilometers . . . ."  

 

If you go to the NASA/JPL site I put above,

 

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/fireballs/

 

you will see this

 

Showing 1 to 10 of 753 entries

Peak Brightness Date/Time (UT)	Latitude (deg.)	Longitude (deg.)	Altitude (km)	Velocity (km/s)	Velocity Components (km/s)			Total Radiated Energy (J)	Calculated Total Impact Energy (kt)
					vx	vy	vz
2018-07-27 09:35:14	58.8S	105.8E	32.0					10.5e10	0.32
2018-07-25 21:55:26	76.9N	69.0W	43.3	24.4	20.4	12.9	-3.8	87.7e10	2.1
2018-07-17 15:17:37	82.5N	136.7W						21.1e10	0.59
2018-06-26 17:51:53	32.0N	12.1E	63.0	14.1	-10.0	-1.0	-9.9	2.9e10	0.1
2018-06-21 01:16:20	52.8N	38.1E	27.2	14.4	-8.9	-4.3	-10.5	122.4e10	2.8
2018-06-02 16:44:12	21.2S	23.3E	28.7	16.9	0.9	-16.4	3.9	37.5e10	0.98
2018-05-12 03:26:46	6.5S	173.7E	34					19.3e10	0.54
2018-05-08 02:27:13	32N	60.7W						7.3e10	0.23
2018-05-03 07:23:59	46.9N	7.5W	39	11.5	1.3	-2.1	-11.2	3.8e10	0.13
2018-04-30 13:17:57	45.5S	1.4W	34	13.1	8.7	-9.5	2.5	3.0e10	0.1

 

There it is, second line down.  

 

First you will see an interactive Map  The green circle in Greenland is the one from the 25th.

 

Notice all the hits is the USA?  See that Red one in Russia from a few years ago, that was nearly 500 KT.  It that was over a major city it would have killed thousands.   

 

 

I don't know what would be more authoritative than NASA/JPL.  The Tweet from "Rocket Ron" (in your screen shot), which "media" outlets completely screwed up, works at JPL.

2 hours ago, Mallette said:

I will file it in my head as

I think that is where it is, in your head.  The only thing that is disappearing are the stories that were originally saying (started in Australia) that the base was "hit", struck, etc. 

 

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/08/03/no-a-meteor-did-not-destroy-thule-air-base/

 

I would just chock it up to being sucked in by an Aussie who doesn't know his A S S  from an asteroid and then it just kept getting reprinted.

 

Travis

 

From the NASA/JPL site on who, EXACTLY, they approximate/calculate the impact energy produced (Which is exactly what you would expect from NASA/JPL)

 

Introduction

Fireball from the Perseid shower as seen from the Space Station on 2011-Aug-13.

Fireballs and bolides are astronomical terms for exceptionally bright meteors that are spectacular enough to to be seen over a very wide area. A world map shows a visual representation of the data table that provides a chronological data summary of fireball and bolide events provided by U.S. Government sensors. Ground-based observers sometimes also witness these events at night, or much more rarely in daylight, as impressive atmospheric light displays. This website is not meant to be a complete list of all fireball events. Only the brightest fireballs are noted.

A meteoroid is generally defined as an asteroid or comet fragment that orbits the Sun and has an approximate size between ten microns and a meter or so. Meteors, or “shooting stars,” are the visible paths of meteoroids that have entered the Earth’s atmosphere at high velocities.
A fireball is an unusually bright meteor that reaches a visual magnitude of -3 or brighter when seen at the observer’s zenith.
Objects causing fireball events can exceed one meter in size. Fireballs that explode in the atmosphere are technically referred to as bolides although the terms fireballs and bolides are often used interchangeably.

During the atmospheric entry phase, an impacting object is both slowed and heated by atmospheric friction. In front of it, a bow shock develops where atmospheric gases are compressed and heated. Some of this energy is radiated to the object causing it to ablate, and in most cases, to break apart. Fragmentation increases the amount of atmosphere intercepted and so enhances ablation and atmospheric braking. The object catastrophically disrupts when the force from the unequal pressures on the front and back sides exceeds its tensile strength.

Objects causing fireballs are usually not large enough to survive passage through the Earth’s atmosphere intact, although fragments, or meteorites, are sometimes recovered on the ground. The approximate total radiated energy in the atmosphere is provided in unit of Joules, a unit of energy given in kilograms times velocity squared, or kg x (m/s)². An event with an energy equivalent of one thousand tons of TNT explosives is termed a kiloton (kt) event, where 1 kt = 4.185 x 10¹² Joules. In the Data Table, the total radiated energy is given but this is always less that the total impact energy. Peter Brown and colleagues have provided an empirical expression to approximately provide the total impact energy in kt (E), given the optical radiant energy in kt (E_o) (see: Brown et al., The flux of small near-Earth objects colliding with the Earth. Nature, vol. 420, 21 Nov. 2002, pp. 294-296).

E = 8.2508 x E_o^0.885

The Data Table provides information on the date and time of each fireball event, its geographic location, its altitude and velocity at peak brightness, its approximate total optical radiated energy and its calculated total impact energy. The pre-impact velocity components are expressed in a geocentric Earth-fixed reference frame defined as follows: the z-axis is directed along the Earth’s rotation axis towards the celestial north pole, the x-axis lies in the Earth’s equatorial plane, directed towards the prime meridian, and the y-axis completes the right-handed coordinate system.

 

 

 

cneos_fireballs_plot.svg

[Mallette]

Last word on this, unless something new develops. Even if all the reports and buzz were in error, once something like this penetrates to widespread, reasonably credible sites it is my belief that USAF or other DOD agency should respond in an official capacity...as in the police "Nothing to see here, folks. Go on with your business." 

 

Dave

[Jeff Matthews]

45 minutes ago, Mallette said:

Last word on this, unless something new develops. Even if all the reports and buzz were in error, once something like this penetrates to widespread, reasonably credible sites it is my belief that USAF or other DOD agency should respond in an official capacity...as in the police "Nothing to see here, folks. Go on with your business." 

 

Dave

No doubt.  I wish Trump would come out and expressly own or disown Q so this craziness can be settled.  Why let conspiracy theories become overly ripe when the truth can be pronounced straight from the horse's mouth?

[Mallette]

5 minutes ago, Jeff Matthews said:

Why let conspiracy theories become overly ripe when the truth can be pronounced straight from the horse's mouth?

Fully concur. No clue or interest what the first sentence referenced, but this part is what I was talking about. When a sensitive U.S. base is reported to have a near hit by something, DOD should say "It didn't happen" if it is fake news. To fail to do so is to create doubt.

 

Dave