SCI/TECH: Small Asteroid Passes Between Satellites and Earth

A fairly small asteroid made a near miss flyby on December 19th. The rock, if it had impacted earth, would not have cause major damage. Astronomers believe that even if it had entered the atmosphere, it would have exploded and burned up before impact. The scariest part of this story is that this asteroid was undetected until after it had based because of the trajectory it had approached from. It came at the earth from the direction of the sun.



This story has shades of "Aussie Bloke" for me. This asteroid came towards earth from our blind spot, the sun, and passed the earth in the southern skies.

How many more asteroid are out there, hurtling towards earth from the sun, and will we have any chance of detecting them?

Originally posted by phreak_of_nature
How many more asteroid are out there, hurtling towards earth from the sun, and will we have any chance of detecting them?

I'm pretty sure that won't go unnoticed, and the observation programs will add focus to these apprach trajectories.

Interesting post!

I'm afraid though that the current technology isn't yet capable of accurately covering that area of the sky. I would agree that this is an area that they certainly are wanting to improve upon, but will they be able to do it fast enough?

Along the same lines as the Aussie Bloke hoax though... would they tell us if there was an earth killer approaching from the sun, and only the governments had the ability to see it?

Been a busy month, Geminides peaking on 13th of december, Meteor impacts near Jakarta and North China, maybe the missile shield is working after all

the news has been full of close calls of small rocks hitting the earth lately.i hope nasa is having a good look at the sky lately and paying some attention to the fact that small rocks are getting threw our atmosphere and hitting stuff....flukemol

[edit on 24-12-2004 by flukemol]

[edit on 24-12-2004 by flukemol]