This last Thursday, a massive fireball lit up the skies. Numerous eye witnesses reported seeing it, with some even claiming to have heard a sonic boom following it.
Blogs lit up about it, a security camera caught it, and NASA has said nothing. It is currently mid-monday, and NASA has had the last three and a half days to even at least say they are looking into it.. but no dice.
You had one job NASA. Look at space. Yet a random security camera is doing that job better. What is most disconcerting is the fact that there is a LOT of space With a lot of stuff in it. There are absolutely more meteors out there.
Looking at the footage, about midway through, the meteor reaches it’s closest point. Grazing the earth’s atmosphere and igniting brightly from the friction before pushing on. Had it come a bit closer, we might be hearing about a meteor strike rather than a sighting.
We can not afford for NASA to respond to these things several days late. If a meteor comes directly at us, a week after it hits is not the appropriate time to act. NASA should have seen this thing coming long before it was ever visible to the naked eye.
The idea that they either could not see it, did not look for it, or saw it but chose to do nothing is horrifying. Will NASA even know in advance when Earth is at risk for a massive meteor collision? Will NASA bother telling anyone about it? Or could we just get blown away without warning because NASA decided we would be better off not knowing?
NASA has really dropped the ball on this one. For being our nation’s official experts on space, I would have expected them to be more on top of this.