The annual global celebration which is known as World Asteroid Day is celebrated on June 30 that commemorates the Siberian Tunguska catastrophe. The United Nations General Assembly recognizes this day as the anniversary of the Tunguska disaster which occurred on 3oth June.
Every year on 30th June, the United Nations celebrates Asteroid Day as an awareness program to help people have knowledge and understanding of asteroids, the risk that they can bring to our environment. If people get some knowledge of asteroids, many inventions or mysteries can be solved by studying them.
What are asteroids?
Asteroids are said to be formed millions of years ago from the leftovers of rocky materials left behind during the creation of our Solar System. So far, there have been 1,097,106 asteroids discovered by NASA. However, meteors and Asteroids are not the same, the difference is that meteors are small pieces of matter that enter the atmosphere of the earth as a beam of light.
What is the Tunguska Event, and how did it happen?
On 30th June 1908, a large meteoroid hit a rural area in Siberia, a place in Russia. This explosion was the only meteoroid penetration into the atmosphere of Earth that made history. This meteor landed near Tunguska but however, it did not make its way to the earth. However, the effects of the explosion were somehow major. It destroyed 50 thousand acres of forest, degraded the land where the local people were not able to cultivate the land, polluted the air, disturbed the water table beneath, nearly killed 10 thousand animals living nearby the forest.
The intensity of the explosion was great enough to bring down trees hundreds of kilometers away and kill hundreds of animals in the region. Hence, it is very important to spread awareness and inform the public about such asteroid impacts, the destruction they can cause, and any future possibilities.
World Asteroid Day: Celebration
It is believed that trillions of asteroids have the capability to collide with Earth and only one percent of the asteroids are believed to be detected by using the available observatories. Hence, the Asteroid Day celebration is celebrated with the aim to make the people understand the asteroid strike and the threat that it can bring to our lives. Hence, the tragic event that happened in Siberia due to the Tunguska crash on 30th June is marked as World Asteroid Day. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed June 30th as International Asteroid Day.
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