Last Saturday good afternoon , a tiny asteroid burned up through the ambiance just off the slide of Puerto Rico . The upshot was captured by weather satellites but it was also blot byastronomical observatorieswell before the asteroid actually come nigh to our satellite .
The object , make out as 2019 MO , is estimated to have been around 4 meters ( 13 feet ) in diameter , which could take down a building if it hit Earth , but is really too modest to survive burning up in the atmosphere .
The ATLAS observation tower in Hawaii blot the aim four times in just 30 minutes when the asteroid was 500,000 klick ( 310,000 miles ) from our satellite , or 1.3 metre the distance from Earth to the Moon , before it entered our aura . The detecting pass off at about midnight local time , and evidence that the ATLAS and Pan - STARRS survey telescope can detect asteroid with enough meter to leave a sufficiant warning for evacuation of shock sites .
The observations were assessed mechanically by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL ) Scout impact analysis software , which only gave a modest 2 on the likelihood of it hitting our planet ( 4 is likely ) . Jump to 12 hours later , and a fireball was detect crossing the Caribbean ocean . After this , JPL ’s Davide Farnocchia wonder if the two were the same and asked the community for more observations in the patch of sky where 2019 MO was discovered .
Another Hawaiian telescope , Pan - STARRS 2 was operate at the same time and imaging the same expanse of the sky . Despite the camera not being fully usable , the squad was able to analyze the mental image and discover the asteroid . With the combined data of ATLAS and Pan - STARRS 2 , the Scout software changed its estimation to likely and drew a predicted entree path very close to wherethe distance rocks actually detonate , roughly 380 kilometers ( 240 miles ) in the south of San Juan .
Twelve hr apprisal might not seem a huge amount of time but if it was a more dangerous aim , this could have been living - delivery . The successful emplacement and pathway prediction could mean that for larger object , we may be capable to make sleuthing days in advance . Perhaps not enough time to found a mission to deflect the objective , but peradventure enough to mail people at jeopardy of being in an object ’s path to condom .
ATLAS automatically glance over the whole sky every yoke of nights , looking in all directions . It currently find around 100 asteroids orotund than a block of flats every year . These are considered " Ithiel Town killer " , similar in size to the one thatexploded over Chelyabinskin Russia in 2013 , which was about 20 time ( 65 feet ) across . Anything larger than 140 time ( 460 base ) has the voltage to scourge a country and it ’s calculate that only about one - third of them are know to us . This successful forecasting of great power is sure enough needed .
[ H / T : Weather.com ]
