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Ever wonder why the moon has so many craters? Some of them seemingly fresh craters? Good thing we have an atmosphere.

Hey Capitan, you referrin' to this?

NASA Solves Moon Mystery
(for other readers, this link has some nice supplemental information and links)

By the way, I looked back at your comment on that thread, and also what was written about the Teton bolide. There's no guarantee that a 20-m object would completely burn up in Earth's atmosphere before impact.

Ever see this one?

DOD Satellite Observations

"On 9 December 1997, sensors aboard DOD satellites detected the impact of a meteoroid at 08:15:55 UTC roughly midway between Nuuk and Qaqortoq, Greenland. The object broke into at least 4 pieces. One piece detonated at an altitude of about 46 km at 62.9 degrees North Latitude, 50.9 degrees West Longitude. The remaining 3 pieces detonated in close proximity to one another at altitudes between 28 km, at 62.9 degrees North Latitude, 50.1 degrees West Longitude and 25 km at 62.9 degrees North Latitude, 50.0 degrees West Longitude."

USAF NEWS RELEASE

From:   Headquarters Air Force Technical Applications Center   
        Office of Public Affairs            
        Patrick AFB, Fl.,
        32925-3002
        (407)-494-9915

Date: June 8, 1998

****************************************************************************
On 9 December 1997 at approximately 08:15:55.2 UT, sensors aboard a
U.S. Department of Defense satellite recorded the bright flash of
an apparent meteoroid disintegrating in the atmosphere over
Greenland. The peak radiated intensity recorded on this event 
was 9.5E10 watts/sr (using a 6000K blackbody model for the
radiation). Correspondingly, the total radiated energy of the
event was 2.7E11 Joules.

GOES-8 infrared images on 9 December 1997

Fortunately, Greenland can be seen every three hours in the GOES-8 thermal infrared channel ("I04", or Imager channel 4 at 11 microns) with lower resolution:

GIF animation

coastline map ("+" marks impact point)

Was the "Teton bolide" the one shown in the color photo on that thread? I remember the post about "exogeology," but I guess I signed off because I don't recall the rest of the thread. I now see that the Greenland animation is there too.

It is almost 1:00 pm Pacific time as I post this, so we only have about an hour to go until the "close encounter."