Source
r/askscience•
jsuth

Meteor hitting an airplane?

I live in a complex where planes fly almost directly overhead as they approach landing at a major airport. I saw a shooting star streak across the sky for roughly 20 seconds very close to where I see planes all the time. I assume the odds are astronomically low of a collision, but this got me wondering: is there any real concern by aviation officials? Would there be any warning/would it show up on radar? A simple google search said that there haven't been any known cases.

Posted Jun 14, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

88
birdbrainlabs•

It is very unlikely.

A shooting star is usually a very small object (grain of sand to several cm), and usually disintegrates well above the height airplanes fly at..

There have been a handful of historically documented cases of people being struck by meteorites. The largest was a 4kg stony meteorite that struck a woman in Alabama. She was bruised, but not seriously injured.

At the altitude an airplane operates at (~11km), it is no more likely to be hit by a meteorite than someone at ground level.

There have been cases of satellite reentry debris being a risk to aircraft, and NOTAMs are issued whenever this happens to prevent aircraft from flying through the area.

4
thunderballer•

At the altitude an airplane operates at (~11km), it is no more likely to be hit by a meteorite than someone at ground level.

Probably lower due to the high speed of the airplane travelling right?

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birdbrainlabs•

That would assume the meteorite was aiming for the airplane. A moving airplane is no more likely to be hit by a meteorite than a stationary one.

4
SilpionNuclear Astrophysics | Radiation Therapy•

There would still be an increase in cross-section because the meteor would be able to hit the front of the plane.

2
thunderballer•

Oh ya, took me a while to realize that it would be a random event occurring at a random location

1
dizekat•

In my opinion, a larger concern would not be the collision between meteorite and plane per se, but instead a big meteorite resulting in the air blast; think Tunguska meteorite hitting anywhere in the ocean, bringing down planes in a huge radius. The direct impact appears unlikely: http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/06/04/did-a-meteor-bring-down-air-france-447/ and http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-it-possible-that-a-met

The distribution of the meteorite sizes is such that it would seem you are much more likely to be killed by a big one than by a small one. For example, if you assume that nearly-everyone-killing meteorite (dinosaur killer style) comes in about once every 200 million years, your yearly chance of getting killed by this kind of meteorite is about one in 200 millions. Whereas no one has been confirmed to be killed by a meteorite falling on their head, over many years and billions people.

edit: added another link.

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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birdbrainlabs•

Largely rebutted by black box data that showed co-pilot error and pitot tube icing to be the culprit.

3
[deleted]•

I think NASA and maybe Qinetiq track a lot of the space debris because there is so much of it. So they'd know if there was anything that could take a plane out of the sky coming down.

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