Arizona sky watcher spots asteroid on direct path toward Earth
Jun 5, 2018, 4:35 AM
PHOENIX — It’s a rare occasion when an asteroid is spotted on a direct collision course with Earth.
It’s happened three times, the most recent coming over the weekend.
And each time, the object was spotted by Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson.
On Saturday morning, an asteroid dubbed “2018 LA” that measured an estimated 6 feet across was discovered hurtling toward Earth.
Eight hours later, it broke up harmlessly after entering the Earth’s atmosphere over Africa.
Kowalski observed the object using a 60-inch reflecting telescope located atop Mt Lemmon. The Catalina Sky Survey is a NASA-funded project run by the University of Arizona.
Video posted on YouTube, from a farm just across the border in South Africa, showed a fireball swiftly descending and getting bigger, and then a blinding flash in the sky. It burst apart several miles up, according to NASA.
Initial estimates had the impact zone stretching from southern Africa across the Indian Ocean into New Guinea. Tracking systems narrowed it down to southern Africa.
NASA officials said the scramble among scientists and asteroid observers was a good training exercise. Their ability to zoom in on likely impact areas bodes well for the future, if and when a bigger object heads our way.
“This was a much smaller object than we are tasked to detect and warn about,” NASA’s planetary defense officer, Lindley Johnson, said in a statement. “However, this real-world event allows us to exercise our capabilities and gives some confidence our impact prediction models are adequate to respond to the potential impact of a larger object.”
Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said it’s only the second time the re-entry location was predicted well in advance.
A 2008 asteroid was spotted by Kowalski 19 hours in advance and measured 13 feet, or 4 meters. It came apart above Sudan, as predicted.
A 2014 asteroid was discovered by Kowalski just a few hours before entering over the Atlantic, with little time for tracking.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
