Why NASA failed to detect Northeast Ohio’s 250-ton TNT Meteor before it hit Earth

The sheer speed of this object is why early detection was almost impossible. Traveling at roughly 45,000 miles per hour (72,420 kilometers per hour), the asteroid was moving at nearly 60 times the speed of sound. At that velocity, the space rock covered the distance from the Moon to the Earth in a matter of hours. By the time it was close enough to potentially be spotted by localized arrays, it was already slamming into the upper atmosphere above Lake Erie.