International Asteroid Day
Next: June 30, 2027
Keep watching the skies.
The story
Where it comes from
International Asteroid Day marks 30 June 1908, when an asteroid exploded in the sky over Tunguska in Siberia and knocked down millions of trees across about 2,150 square kilometres of forest, the largest asteroid impact in recorded history. Asteroid Day was founded in 2014 by the astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May, the Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, the filmmaker Grigorij Richters and Danica Remy of the B612 Foundation, and first held on 30 June 2015. In December 2016 the UN made it an international day (resolution 71/90).
How it's celebrated
Asteroid Day events are organised independently around the world, are mostly free and welcome all ages, with space agencies, schools and universities taking part. The Asteroid Foundation in Luxembourg runs the programme and has hosted Asteroid Day LIVE, a 24-hour broadcast with scientists and astronauts. Then look up: NASA notes that small asteroids regularly break up in the atmosphere, causing little or no damage.
Did you know
- The 1908 blast site was so remote that the first scientific expedition did not reach it until 1927.
- The UN named 2029 the International Year of Asteroid Awareness and Planetary Defence, for the year the asteroid Apophis passes safely within about 32,000 kilometres of Earth.
- In December 2020 Japan's Hayabusa2 mission returned samples from the asteroid Ryugu, including the first sample ever taken from beneath an asteroid's surface.
Coming up next
- Canada Day · July 1, 2027
- The First Personal Stereo · July 1, 2027
- World Sports Journalists Day · July 2, 2027
- International Day of Cooperatives · July 3, 2027
- International Plastic Bag Free Day · July 3, 2027
- Independence Day (Fourth of July) · July 4, 2027