An asteroid collided with Earth and burned up in the atmosphere this week, but the real headline here is how little warning we had when it happened.
The incident took place on Tuesday over eastern Siberia, where residents saw a show of lights as the falling rock streaked over a river in Olyokminsk. Its bright flash was visible in the sky from hundreds of miles away. It is not yet known how much debris may have landed on Earth as a result.
The object was detected by NASA scientists, who named it COWECP5. They spotted it with their Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which aims to provide as much as a week of notice for all incoming space objects.
However, on this occasion, just seven hours passed from its initial detection to impact. And while this asteroid was rather small and ultimately did not present any danger, it is scary to think of what could have happened if it had been bigger.
Despite the short notice, scientists from the European Space Agency noted that the impact time was calculated with remarkable accuracy. "Thanks to observations from astronomers around the world, our alert system was able to predict this impact to within +/- 10 seconds," the agency wrote on X.
Both NASA and the ESA have programs in place devoted to spotting and tracking near-Earth objects. Right now, there is no known asteroid posing a threat to Earth for the next 100 years.
Although NASA thought the asteroid was around 1 meter at first, it ultimately turned out to be closer to 70 centimeters, or 28 inches. Experts believe that objects won’t do serious damage until they approach around 18 meters across.
In 2013, a meteor measuring 17 to 20 meters across broke up over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, causing an explosion and a shockwave powerful enough to break windows on the ground. It also injured more than 1,000 people, many of whom experienced burns.
Second asteroid flew by Earth on Wednesday
COWEPC5 was the fourth asteroid strike detected on our planet this year and the 11th overall. NASA reports that 132 known asteroids have passed closer to our planet than the moon since last October, with more than 36,000 asteroid flybys recorded overall.
A second asteroid flew by Earth on Wednesday evening. Although it is believed to be around 1200 feet in diameter, placing it on par with the height of the Empire State Building, it passed Earth at a distance of 1.37 million miles and did not pose a threat to our planet.
Known as 2020 XR, its closest approach was just under six times the distance between Earth and the moon. It’s the same asteroid that astronomers initially feared could strike and destroy one of our cities when they first spotted it in 2020 with the Pan-STARRS 2 observatory in Hawaii. At the time, its apparent orbit showed it could hit Earth in 2028.
However, that estimate was later updated after past data was reevaluated, and they were able to conclude there is a 0% chance of impact until at least 2120. If it does end up striking after that point, we can only hope that humanity will have more than seven hours of notice.
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