- 4609 - ASTEROID - hits the Earth? - An asteroid hit Earth just hours after being detected. It was the 3rd 'imminent impactor' of 2024. A small asteroid burned up in Earth's atmosphere off the coast of California just hours after being discovered and before impact monitoring systems had registered its trajectory.
------------------------------------------ 4609
- ASTEROID -
hits the Earth?
-
- October 2024, an asteroid impacted Earth's
atmosphere just hours after being detected, somehow, it managed to circumvent
impact monitoring systems during its approach to our planet. However, on the
bright side, the object measured just 3 feet in diameter and posed very little
threat to anything on Earth's surface.
-
- This asteroid, designated “2024 UQ”, was
first discovered on October, 22 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert
System (ATLAS) survey in Hawaii, a network of four telescopes that scan the sky
for moving objects that might be space rocks on a collision course with Earth.
Two hours later, the asteroid burned up over the Pacific Ocean near California,
making it an "imminent impactor."
-
- The small amount of time between detection
and impact means impact monitoring systems, operated by the European Space
Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, didn't receive tracking data
about the incoming asteroid until after it struck Earth.
-
- ATLAS survey obtained images that included
detections of a small object in a high-probability collision course. However,
due to the location of the object near the edge of two adjacent fields, the
candidate was recognized as a moving object only a few hours later.
-
- By the time the astrometry reached the
impact monitoring systems, the impact had already happened. ESA's NEO Coordination Center (NEOCC) says
flashes were detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's
GOES weather satellites and the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA project that uses a
series of telescopes to search for asteroids and comets in our celestial
neighborhood. These flashes were enough to confirm asteroid 2024 UQ's impact as
well as its trajectory.
-
- According to ESA, the asteroid was the
third imminent impactor detected this year. As for the two other asteroids that
were been detected within hours of impacting Earth in 2024, the first is known
as 2024 BX1. It measured around 3.3 feet wide and burned up harmlessly over
Berlin, Germany in January. The other, 2024 RW1, exploded over the Philippines
on Sept. 4.
-
- NASA is developing a new infrared telescope
known as NEO Surveyor to hunt for potentially threatening near-Earth
objects. But it's not all just about
detection and tracking. Space agencies are testing methods of redirecting
incoming asteroids should the need ever arise.
-
- In 2022, NASA's DART mission crashed an
impactor into a double asteroid system in an attempt to change its trajectory
(the endeavor was a success). China is also developing its own mission to
deflect an asteroid by 2030.
-
- The Taurid Meteoroid Stream, which is
possibly responsible for the famous Tunguska and Chelyabinsk impacts, probably
doesn't hide a civilization-killing asteroid.
-
- A swarm of interplanetary dust, rocks,
comets and asteroids thought to be responsible for two famous impacts here on
Earth has been found to be not quite as menacing as astronomers had feared.
-
- The risk of being hit by a large asteroid in
the Taurid swarm is much lower than we believed, which is great news for
planetary defense.
-
- The swarm in question is the Taurid
Meteoroid Complex, which is a huge trail of debris that cuts across the path of
Earth's orbit around the sun. It's responsible for several meteor showers, most
notably the Southern Taurids that peak every year on November 5, and the
Northern Taurids on Noember. 12.
-
- Meteor showers are produced when swarms of
tiny particles of dust, most just microns, millionths of a meter, in size, burn
up in the Earth's atmosphere. However, lurking among all the dust are larger
chunks, from boulder-size rocks to full-blown asteroids. They all seem to come
from a parent body, the short-period Comet 2P/Encke.
-
- Comet 2P/Encke was the second periodic
comet to be discovered. And the first,
Halley's Comet. A short-period comet is one that regularly orbits the
sun more often than once every 200 years. (Comets that take longer than 200
years to complete an orbit are called long-period comets, and originate from
deep within the distant Oort Cloud.) In 2P/Encke's case, it orbits every 3.3
years, the shortest orbit of any known periodic comet.
-
- Encke is pretty big for a short-period
comet, spanning about 3 miles in diameter. It's also joined on its orbit by
dozens of other minor bodies. The
theory is that “2P/Encke? and all its companions originated from a much larger
body that fragmented as it came in from the outer solar system and got close to
the heat of the sun.
-
- Estimates of when this occurred vary, from
about 20,000 years ago to just 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, but the worry was that
there may be kilometer-sized objects lurking in the Taurid Complex that we
haven't discovered yet. Objects of this size could cause widespread damage were
they to collide with our planet.
-
- Fortunately, we found that it's likely
there may only be a handful of asteroids, perhaps only nine to 14 of them, that
fit this large size class in the swarm.
The parent object that originally created the swarm was probably closer
to 6.2 miles in diameter rather than a massive 62 miles object
-
- Some uncertainty does remain over the
origin of the Taurid Complex. In 2014, astronomers using NASA's Infrared
Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, studied the spectra of many of the
objects in the Taurid Complex and found a wide range of types, from stony
S-type asteroids to carbon-rich C-types.
-
- This diversity called into question the
idea that they'd all originated from a common parent body. However, a year
later, a subsequent study that analyzed the spectra of 33 fireballs hailing
from the Taurid Complex concluded that, despite the compositional variation,
the fireballs all had spectral and physical characteristics consistent with
having come from a comet that has broken apart.
-
- Regardless of their origin, and despite
being linked to the last two destructive impacts on Earth, the 1908 Tunguska
event and the 2013 Chelyabinsk airburst,
it seems that the Taurid Complex does not harbor any hidden dangers. The
objects that are present within the stream are on well-known orbits and do not
currently pose a threat to Earth.
-
-
November 14, 2024 ASTEROID -
hits the Earth? 4609
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--------------------- --- Friday, November 15,
2024
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