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Meteor hits earth and asteroid comes close within 24 hours

By Hilary Lane

Story Created: Feb 15, 2013 at 7:56 PM EDT

Story Updated: Feb 16, 2013 at 12:11 AM EDT

A meteor exploded over mountains in Russia on Friday injuring close to one thousand people.

The matter was traveling at 33,000 miles across the sky causing damage to buildings and loud explosion noises.

Meanwhile, an asteroid flew 17,000 miles above the earth's surface also on Friday.

As scientists expected, there was no impact.

The asteroid is the size of an olympic swimming pool or half the length of a football field.

According to scientists, the earth picks up tons of meteoric debris every day, but large pieces are fairly uncommon.

An object the size of the meteor that hit Russia Friday occurs approximately every 50 years.

However, the last recorded time was in 1908, when an asteroid exploded and leveled trees in Tunguska, Russia.

Scientists are calling Friday's space activity a historic event.

NASA said the path of the meteor appeared to be quite different than that of the asteroid, making the two objects "completely unrelated."

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