The huge fireball was detected by a US military satellite and then referred to the space agency for investigation.
Scientists say new research into a Russian meteor shower in February, that injured hundreds, shows the Earth is 'vulnerable'.
The explosion from the Bering Sea meteor from December 2018 was only 40% as powerful as the Chelyabinsk meteor strike in 2013, which injured hundreds of people when it exploded. It briefly outshone the sun and inflicted severe burns on observers below, as well as smashing windows and rattling buildings.The Chelyabinsk meteor was at its brightest and hottest when it was 18 miles above the Earth. Its speed at this point has been calculated at 40,000mph, or 11.6 miles per second.
That means a rock that was initially the size of a double-decker bus was travelling at 20 times the speed of a bullet. It was the largest object to hit Earth since the Tunguska event of 1908, when an exploding comet or asteroid destroyed 2,000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.
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