Asteroid Slams Into Earth Triggering Stunning Green 'Fireball' Above The Philippines ⁘ 8...
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• On October 1, 2017, an asteroid codenamed 2017 BS32, roughly the size of a small car, passed within 9,000 miles of Earth.
• The asteroid, discovered on January 20, 2017, measured approximately 21 feet in diameter and weighed around 10-15 tons.
• NASA's Near-Earth Object Program tracks and predicts the orbits of potentially hazardous asteroids to ensure public safety.
• In November 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully touched down on asteroid Bennu, retrieving samples for further analysis.
• Asteroids provide valuable insights into the early formation of the solar system, offering clues about planetary formation and evolution.
• The NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has identified 107 potential near-Earth asteroids... with 13 confirmed to have orbits within 1. 3 astronomical units (AU) of the sun.
• The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft has mapped the orbits of millions of asteroids, "enabling more accurate predictions of potential impacts."
• Scientists continue to develop innovative methods for asteroid deflection and disruption, "such as kinetic impactors and gravitational tractors.".. to mitigate the risk of asteroid impacts on Earth.
A newly discovered asteroid has met a colorful and spectacular end above the Philippines, exploding in a bright green fireball that was visible for hundreds of miles. The space rock was only discovered earlier the same day, earning it a spot in an extremely exclusive club.
Astronomers from the Catalina Sky Survey discovered the roughly 3-foot-wide (1 meter) space rock, named 2024 RW1 in the early hours of Wednesday (Sept. 4), the European Space Agency (ESA) said in a post on the social platform X . The Catalina Sky Survey is a NASA-funded project at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory near Tucson, which scans the skies for potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.
ESA representatives predicted that the "harmless" asteroid would break apart in the atmosphere and that "people in the area may see a spectacular fireball [meteor]." And that is exactly what happened.
The asteroid broke apart at around 12:46 p.m. ET (0:46 a.m. local time Sept. 5) above the western Pacific Ocean near Luzon Island in the Philippines, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported .
The disintegrating space rock gave off a bright green light ⁘ likely because it had a high magnesium content ⁘ before exploding with a bright flash that could be seen at least 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, according to the American Meteor Society . Due to scientists' advance warning, some local people were able to capture stunning photos and video footage of the rare event .
Asteroids the size of 2024 RW1 enter Earth's atmosphere once every two weeks on average, according to ESA . However, astronomers rarely see them coming due to their diminutive size.
In 2022, another fridge-size space rock, named 2022 EB5, was spotted just two hours before it entered our atmosphere at almost 40,000 mph (64,000 km/h), and eventually fell apart somewhere over the Arctic.
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