A small asteroid has reached the skies of North America Saturday November 19th. Upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, it split into smaller pieces and fell into the lake. ontarianSouth of Canada.
The JAR had already detected the approach of the asteroid called ‘2022 WJ1’ thanks to its Scout Impact Risk Rating System. The fireball was about a meter wide and was discovered three and a half hours after it collided with Earth. It was the sixth time in history that mankind managed to track a meteorite before it hit the planet.
“The planetary defense community has truly demonstrated its skill and preparedness with its response to this short warning event,” said Kelly Fast, Near-Earth Object Observations Program Manager for the Office of Defense Coordination. planet at NASA headquarters. to become real-world spontaneous exercises and give us confidence that NASA’s planetary defense systems are capable of signaling the response to the possibility of a severe impact by a larger object.”
The US space agency has the ability to detect and track nearby objects Earth they are even bigger. Some of them may survive entering the atmosphere and cause damage to the Earth’s surface, and systems like Scout would help predict them and act accordingly.
Generally, detection of potentially threatening near-Earth objects earlier than with 2022 WJ1. Although the weekend asteroid was slow to be detected, it posed no danger to the planet and its discovery served to test NASA’s abilities to discovery, surveillance, determining orbits and predicting impacts.
Catalina Sky Survey
The project Catalina Sky Surveyfunded by NASA and supported by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office’s Near-Earth Object Observing Program, was the one that detected 2022 WJ1 and notified the Center for Minor Planets, responsible for exchanging information for position measurements of small celestial bodies.
As detailed on the Catalina Sky Survey website, its researchers are located at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In addition, they specify that they focus on “continuous development and application of innovative software” and in near-Earth object detection and tracking.
The role of NASA
Following the Catalina Sky Survey discovery, NASA turned to its Scout impact risk assessment system, which is maintained by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies’ investment in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Quickly, they updated the new data on their page and started to calculate the estimated trajectory of the celestial body and the chances of impact.
Seven minutes after the asteroid was released, Scout predicted a probability of impact on Earth of 25%. Their possible collision locations ranged from the Atlantic Ocean, near the east coast of North America, to Mexico.
Shantanu Naidu, a navigation engineer and scout operator at JPL, said objects as small as 2022 WJ1 “can only be detected by when they are very close to the Earth. In the case of larger meteorites, their detection is done earlier.
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