An asteroid observed on the day of the International Asteroid Day streaked across the sky two football fields across.

The 114th anniversary of the Tunguska meteor hit on Thursday was celebrated by two football fields in width streaking across the skies above Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River at a speed of 65,000 miles per hour. 

Compared to the Raleigh beltline, that is more than twice as large. A blast like that was equivalent to the size of the one that blew away Mount Saint Helens' top.

There was an explosion about 20 megatons strong which caused a forest to go up in flames about 850 square miles below the surface of the earth about 5 miles from the ground. 

The International Asteroid Day is now celebrated annually on the anniversary of the Tunguska event, the asteroid event which all other asteroid events are measured against.

NASA, the European Space Agency, and others pursue planetary defense efforts in the wake of the Asteroid Day established by the United Nations in 2014.

Knowing the risks of NEOs is crucial to taking action. Over the next 10 years, scientists are tasked with increasing the number of asteroids discovered per year to 100,000 as technology improves and missions and sky surveys are launched.

A space rock's orbit can be calculated once it has been discovered by collecting observations around the globe. 

Using this type of data, we can make predictions about when and where the Earth's orbit around the Sun might cross with an asteroid's path.

With more than 1.2 million planets, moons, asteroids, and comets stored in the CNEOS database, NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) is leading the way. 

NEO, as defined by the neighborhood improvement organization, is a neighborhood in which fewer than 30,000 people live. The 4.6 million mile range between Earth and less than 0.2% of asteroids is considered potentially hazardous.

In case of an imminent impact, NASA and other agencies are considering what to do. Researchers share ideas at the annual Planetary Defense Conference.

The conference includes interagency tabletop exercises, which put leaders through the paces of handling a possible impact of the discovery of the object.

NEOs pass every day harmlessly back in the real world. They will pass by just one another tomorrow, July 1, at a distance of over twice as far as the Moon. 

The Apollo asteroid 2012 HG2, which shattered windows over Chelyabinsk, Russia, is being watched closely by researchers. 

The odds of the object entering the atmosphere are one in a million until 2052. Two years later, the chances increase to 1 in 23,000 chances.

As these objects are tugged by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Saturn, their orbits constantly change. We are finding new objects every day. International teams are working on this project.