![]() But this real-world event with a very small asteroid allowed the planetary defense community to exercise capabilities and gave some confidence that the impact prediction models at CNEOS are highly capable of informing the response to the potential impact of a larger object.Ģ022 EB5 is only the fifth small asteroid to be detected in space before hitting Earth's atmosphere. NASA's goal is to keep track of such asteroids and to calculate their trajectories in order to have many years' notice ahead of a potential impact should one ever be identified. "But very few of these asteroids have actually been detected in space and observed extensively prior to impact, basically because they are very faint until the last few hours, and a survey telescope has to observe just the right spot of sky at the right time for one to be detected."Ī larger asteroid with hazardous impact potential would be discovered much farther from Earth. "Tiny asteroids like 2022 EB5 are numerous, and they impact into the atmosphere quite frequently-roughly every 10 months or so," said Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS at JPL. They are much smaller than the objects that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is tasked by NASA with detecting and warning about. Tiny asteroids of this size get bright enough to be detected only in the last few hours before their impact (or before they make a very close approach to Earth). PST), 2022 EB5 hit the atmosphere as predicted by Scout, and infrasound detectors have confirmed the impact occurred at the predicted time.įrom observations of the asteroid as it approached Earth and the energy measured by infrasound detectors at time of impact, 2022 EB5 is estimated to have been about 6 1/2 feet (2 meters) in size. Scout determined that 2022 EB5 would enter the atmosphere southwest of Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island nearly 300 miles (470 kilometers) off the east coast of Greenland and northeast of Iceland. The asteroid – estimated to be about 6 ½ feet (2 meters) wide – was discovered only two hours before impact. "As more observatories tracked the asteroid, our calculations of its trajectory and impact location became more precise." This animation shows asteroid 2022 EB5's predicted orbit around the Sun before impacting into the Earth’s atmosphere on March 11, 2022. We were able to determine the possible impact locations, which initially extended from western Greenland to off the coast of Norway," said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at JPL who developed Scout. ![]() "Scout had only 14 observations over 40 minutes from one observatory to work with when it first identified the object as an impactor. CNEOS calculates every known near-Earth asteroid orbit to improve impact hazard assessments in support of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Maintained by CNEOS at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Scout automatically searches the Minor Planet Center's database for possible new short-term impactors. As soon as Scout determined that 2022 EB5 was going to hit Earth's atmosphere, the system alerted the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) and NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and flagged the object on the Scout webpage to notify the near-Earth object observing community. NASA's "Scout" impact hazard assessment system then took these early measurements to calculate the trajectory of 2022 EB5. The object was posted on the Minor Planet Center's Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page to flag it for additional observations that would confirm it as a previously unknown asteroid. Sarneczky at the Piszkéstető Observatory in northern Hungary first reported observations of the small object to the Minor Planet Center-the internationally recognized clearinghouse for the position measurements of small celestial bodies. Two hours before the asteroid made impact, K.
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