4 Minutes
How a small asteroid told its story
On 13 February 2023, a small asteroid designated 2023 CX1 briefly lit the afternoon sky above northwestern France before breaking apart in a spectacular fireball. The object — less than one metre across and initially estimated at about 650 kilograms — was first identified by a Hungarian astronomer roughly seven hours earlier when it was still some 200,000 kilometres from Earth. Rapid coordination between professional agencies and citizen observers enabled scientists to reconstruct the asteroid's path and its violent disintegration with unprecedented detail.
A meteorite fragment from asteroid 2023 CX1
Observation, tracking and recovery
After the discovery alert, teams at NASA and the European Space Agency calculated a precise trajectory and impact timeline. Ground-based networks then mobilised to capture the event. France's FRIPON/Vigie-Ciel network — a collaboration of professionals and amateur astronomers created to detect and collect meteorites — received dozens of photos and videos, many contributed by the public and shared on social media. That crowd-sourced imagery proved decisive: one high-quality video clearly shows the object fragmenting in flight, allowing analysts to count pieces and time the breakup sequence.
Local residents helped recover the first meteorite two days later in Saint-Pierre-le-Viger: a 93-gram stone that became part of the National Museum of Natural History's collection. In total, teams recovered about a dozen fragments that preserved physical and chemical evidence of the asteroid's origin.
Scientific findings and context
The full dataset and analysis were published in Nature Astronomy after two and a half years of study. Researchers traced 2023 CX1's source to the Massalia family in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As it entered Earth's atmosphere, the asteroid disintegrated "very brutally in two stages" at roughly 28 kilometres altitude, according to meteorite specialist Brigitte Zanda. The event removed about 98% of the object's mass and released a large amount of energy in a short time.
Only a small number of asteroids have been detected before impact — approximately 11 to date — and meteorites have been recovered from only four. Comparing 2023 CX1 with larger, well-known events helps scientists understand how impact consequences scale with size and fragmentation style. For example, the 2013 Chelyabinsk airburst involved a much larger, ~20-metre object that broke into several successive fragments, producing a powerful shockwave that shattered windows and injured over 1,000 people. By contrast, the rapid two-stage breakup of 2023 CX1 yielded smaller fragments that caused no reported damage, though simulations indicate that this kind of abrupt fragmentation can concentrate energy and, for larger objects, could elevate surface hazard risks.
Implications for impact monitoring and planetary defense
This case highlights the value of early detection and distributed observation networks. Pre-impact discovery allowed precise orbital reconstruction, while rapid public engagement produced high-resolution visual records of fragmentation dynamics. The combined data improve models of atmospheric entry, fragmentation thresholds, and energy deposition profiles — all crucial inputs for impact risk assessment and emergency response planning.
Conclusion
Asteroid 2023 CX1 offered a rare, well-documented example of how a small near-Earth object behaves during atmospheric entry. The event reinforced the importance of international monitoring systems, professional-amateur partnerships, and timely data-sharing in advancing our ability to predict and mitigate meteorite hazards.
Source: sciencealert
Comments