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On February 15, a fragment of 2023 CXI was found by members of the French search group Fripon/Vigie-Ciel in a field in the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Viger, France.
Vigie Ciel is a meteor-tracking group working with numerous French scientific institutions, like the Paris Observatory and the University of Paris-Saclay.
An 18-year-old student and volunteer of Vigie-Ciel, Lois Leblanc discovered "a dark stone barely level with the ground of a field"
Upon analyzing Leblanc's find, the team confirmed it was a fragment from 2023 CXI.
The meteorite, which originated from an asteroid, was discovered by Krisztian Sarneczky, an astronomer and asteroid hunter from K88 GINOP-KHK, Piszkesteto, Hungary, seven hours before the impact.
In an email from Sarneczky to Space.com senior writer Tereza Pultarova said, "I discovered this small body during a routine NEO (near Earth object) hunt,"
Sarneczky added, "It was immediately obvious that it was an NEO, but it wasn't particularly fast across the sky, as it was heading right towards us, and it was faint,"
The information was passed along to the European Space Agency.
This is the seventh time that an asteroid has been discovered before entering the Earth's atmosphere. The most recent asteroid was discovered four hours before striking Earth, 2022 WJ1, over Toronto, Canada, on November 19, 2022.
ESA wrote on Twitter that "It's a sign of the rapid advances in global detection capabilities,"
Related Links
Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA
Asteroid Watch at NASA
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Asteroid and Comet Mission News, Science and Technology
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