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An Israeli pilot who reported seeing the explosion of a missile in mid-air may have actually observed a fireball produced by a small Near Earth Object burning-up in the atmosphere. The pilot of a Tel Aviv-Moscow flight witnessed the explosion within Ukrainian airspace on July 4 and said he thought that a missile had detonated a few miles from the plane. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry, however, have issued a statement saying that no missiles had been fired in the area that night and that the pilots witnessed a fireball entering the Earth's atmosphere. Pilots of two other planes flying over the Dnipropetrovsk region reported seeing a big blue fireball that resembled a missile explosion at the same time, said Ukrainian aviation officials.
In October an errant missile fired from a Ukrainian military base shot down a Russian plane, killing all 78 people on board, the majority immigrants to Israel. Ukrainian officials have, however, stressed that the current incident is natural in origin.
A number of NEO scientists, such as Dr Benny Peiser, moderator of the CCNet list and scientist at Liverpool John Moores University, have voiced concerns that even small NEOs could cause hazards through political instability if they were mistaken for terrorist actions or nuclear explosions. Research published in the journal Planetary and Space Science by Dr Arcadio Poveda and colleages calculated that the collision of a meteorite with a cruising aircraft, which could cause a serious accident, is likely to happen once every 30 years. The collision of meteorites is thus a very minor hazard in air travel. Observations by pilots of unexplained detonations and lights originating from fireballs, however, are likely to be more frequent. The research also suggested that the collision of meteorites with cars occurs once every 16 years.
More info: BBC Online Article
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