The asteroid, which is about a meter in diameter, was spotted on Wednesday by NASA Catalina Sky Observatory – and gave this celestial body the name CAQTDL2. It should enter the Earth’s atmosphere around 19:00. 45 minutes Lithuanian time (or 00:45 a.m. time of the expected place of contact in the Philippines).
CAQTDL2 is currently estimated to hit Earth at 17.6 kilometers per second – or 63,360 kilometers per hour – which Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University in Belfast says is an average speed. “Don’t be fooled by Hollywood movies where you see a thing fly through the sky and you have time to run out of the house, pick up the cat, jump in the car and go somewhere. You don’t have time for that,” he says.
The good news is that no such evacuation will be necessary. Although the impact will be dramatic and may be as bright as the Moon in the night sky, it will pose little to no danger to those on the ground. “An object of such a small size cannot do any damage to the Earth’s atmosphere,” says A. Fitzsimmons. “It will burn harmlessly and explode as a very impressive fireball.”
The scientist says that two or three objects of this size crash into Earth every year – and that we are increasingly able to spot them early. Astronomers spotted the first such asteroid even before it flew by in 2008. CAQTDL2 will be the ninth accurately predicted asteroid to collide with Earth.
“The really positive aspect is that the telescopes are now good enough to spot these objects and give us a bit of a warning,” Fitzsimmons says. “But if this object had been much larger and potentially a threat to humans on Earth, it would have been much brighter and we would have seen it from much further away.” So, this is actually a very nice piece of evidence that the current monitoring systems are doing a very good job. On average, we probably detect one small asteroid every year before it enters the atmosphere, and the detection systems are just getting better.”
Earth is not only developing and improving the early warning system, but also in 2022. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has proven that we have a chance to save the planet from a catastrophic impact by a larger object. DART hit the 160 meter wide asteroid moon Dimorph and slowed it down a bit. This means that some impact can be avoided – at least in theory.
Next month, the European Space Agency is due to launch its Hera mission, which aims to study the results of the impact up close and further improve our understanding of planetary defences.
Parengta pagal „New Scientist“.
2024-09-04 16:41:48