Asteroid CAQTDL2 is about to hit Earth – however don’t fret, it’s only small

Astronomers have simply found that an asteroid is about to strike Earth at hundreds of kilometres per hour, impacting simply east of the Philippines and probably within the sea. Fortunately, the comparatively small object poses no hurt and can fritter away within the environment in a fireball.

The asteroid, which is estimated to be roughly 1 metre throughout, was noticed earlier at present by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey and given the designation CAQTDL2. It is because of strike Earth at round 1645 GMT, or 1745 London time, 1245 New York time and 0045 native time on the influence web site within the Philippines.

It’s presently estimated that CAQTDL2 will hit at a velocity of 17.6 kilometres per second, or 63,360 kilometres per hour, which Alan Fitzsimmons at Queen’s College Belfast within the UK says is about common for such objects. “Don’t be fooled by Hollywood movies where you can see the thing coming screaming through the sky and you’ve got time to run out the house, get the cat, jump in the car and drive somewhere. You don’t have the time to do that,” he says.

The excellent news is that there isn’t any want for such an evacuation. Though the influence might be dramatic – probably flaring as brightly because the moon within the evening sky – it poses no hazard to these on the bottom. “An object this small can’t do any damage on the ground, we’re protected from them by the Earth’s atmosphere,” says Fitzsimmons. “It will harmlessly burn up and explode as a very impressive fireball.”

Fitzsimmons says that two or three objects this measurement strike Earth yearly and that we’re more and more in a position to spot them early, with the first incoming asteroid being noticed by astronomers earlier than touchdown in 2008. CAQTDL2 would be the ninth precisely predicted asteroid strike on Earth.

“The really positive aspect about this is that the survey telescopes are now good enough to spot these things coming in and give us a bit of warning,” he says. “Put another way, if this object had been much larger and so perhaps pose a threat to people on the ground, then it would be much brighter, and we’d have projected it much further out. So this actually is a really nice demonstration that the current survey systems are doing a very good job. We’re probably averaging about one small asteroid detected before it hits the atmosphere every year now, and the survey systems are only getting better.”

Not solely is Earth creating and bettering its early warning system, however in 2022 NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Take a look at (DART) spacecraft proved that now we have an opportunity of saving the planet from a catastrophic influence of a bigger object. DART crashed into the 160-metre-wide moonlet Dimorphos and slowed it barely, demonstrating that in principle we might avert such a catastrophe. Subsequent month, the European House Company is because of launch its Hera mission to review the outcomes of the influence up-close, and additional enhance our understanding of planetary defence.