A newly spotted asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere over the South Pacific, creating a spectacular bright flash in the sky over the Philippines just hours after first being detected
An asteroid hit Earth and burned up in the atmosphere just east of the Philippines. It was discovered by astronomers only hours before it streaked across the sky in a bright fireball, but went unseen by many on the ground as the view was obscured by cloudy weather produced by Typhoon Enteng.As predicted, the asteroid struck Earth around 1645 GMT, or 1745 London time, 1245 New York time and 0045 local time just east of the northernmost island of the Philippine archipelago.
“An object this small can’t do any damage on the ground, we’re protected from them by the Earth’s atmosphere,” says Fitzsimmons. A video shared on social media shot from the province of Cagayan at the northern tip of the Philippines shows a flickering green fireball appear behind the clouds followed by an orange tail, which disappeared just seconds later.
☄️?Woah! Newly discovered 1-1.5m asteroid 2024 RW1 burns up above the Philippines just hours after it was first seen.Fitzsimmons says that two or three objects this size strike Earth every year and that we are increasingly able to spot them early, with the“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.
Not only is Earth developing and improving its early warning system, but in 2022 NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft proved that we have a chance of saving the planet from a catastrophic impact of a larger object. DARTand slowed it slightly, demonstrating that in theory we could avert such a disaster. Next month, the European Space Agency is due to launch its Hera mission to study the results of the impact up-close, and further improve our understanding of planetary defence.
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