Never trust an asteroid

Published on March 2103 in Catalonia Today magazine

Cheliabinsk, Russia, February 2013

Space just can’t be trusted. While everyone was expecting the asteroid 2012DA14 to pass very close to Earth (so close that many artificial satellites orbiting the planet do so at the same distance of about 28,000 kilometres), not even Nasa, the ESA nor the extensive network of observatories scattered around the world picked up the presence of its little brother. Just 15 hours before the asteroid was due, a meteorite of more than respectable proportions slammed into the Urals region of Russia, causing 1,500 injuries, damaging 3,000 buildings and releasing the energy equivalent to 20 times the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How this visitor escaped detection by the space agencies with their vast resources leads us to believe that there is something wrong in here.