00:54 Asteroid Explosion Caught on Satellite Meteorologist Ari Sarsalari looks at a strange sight caught on the GOES satellite.

At a Glance A lightning detection instrument on the GOES-East satellite saw an asteroid exploding over the Caribbean Sea.

The asteroid was the size of a small car and likely burned up in Earth's atmosphere. An asteroid harmlessly exploded as it entered earth's atmosphere last weekend and a special satellite sensor saw it all happen over the Caribbean Sea.

The asteroid, named 2019 MO, was detected by NOAA's GOES-East Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument on Saturday at 5:20 p.m. EDT. It shows up as a large flash in the animation below about 240 miles south of San Juan, Puerto Rico .

As its name implies, the GLM instrument is typically used for the detection of lightning on earth, but it has spotted objects from space burning up in the atmosphere several times since it was put into use in 2017.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/asteroid-caribbean-june22.gif" srcset="https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/asteroid-caribbean-june22.gif 400w, https://s.w-x.co/util/image/w/asteroid-caribbean-june22.gif 800w" > Satellite loop from 5:00 p.m. to 5:20 p.m. EDT on Saturday, June 22, 2019, over the Caribbean Sea. (NOAA/CIRA/RAMMB)

2019 MO was estimated to be about 13 feet in diameter , or the size of a small car, according to a news release from the University of Hawaii (UH). Asteroids of that size will most likely burn up completely in atmosphere, the release said.

The total impact energy from 2019 MO was the equivalent of 3 to 5 kilotons of TNT, according to Peter Brown , a meteor scientist at the University of Western Ontario.

Earth's atmosphere has experienced events like this one or bigger (impact energy 3 kilotons or larger) 34 times since April 1988 , or about once per year, according to data from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.

For comparison, the damaging 2013 asteroid that exploded near Chelyabinsk, Russia, was 65 feet in diameter. Its estimated impact energy was the equivalent of 440 kilotons of TNT .

UH's ATLAS and Pan-STARRS survey telescopes were able to identify 2019 MO on Saturday morning before it entered earth's atmosphere, demonstrating that they can be used to provide advance warning for those that may be located at a possible impact site.

The telescopes can detect small asteroids like 2019 MO a half day before they make an entry in earth's atmosphere. Bigger objects like the Chelyabinsk, Russia, event can be spotted a few days before impact occurs .

The estimated path of 2019 MO was from east-to-west with an entry south of Puerto Rico based on observations from the telescopes.