Close Call
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The trajectory of 2009 VA. Click for a larger version. Image credit: NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program
Did you hear about this?
Last Friday, November 6, 2009 an asteroid named 2009 VA and about 7 meters across passed about one Earth diameter away. That’s a mere whisker. In fact, NASA is saying this is the third-closest known (non-impacting) Earth approach on record. NASA estimates an asteroid of this size does impact the Earth about every five years.
2009 VA was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey only 15 hours before the close approach. The time factor isn’t all that surprising, the asteroid is pretty small. A bit over a year ago a smaller asteroid, 2008 TC3, was discovered only 21 hours before it exploded over the Nubian Desert in the Sudan. The significant thing about 2008 TC3 was for the first time an impacting asteroid was seen from Earth, tracked and a impact solution was derived apparently accurate to a few kilometers.
As a side note and I don’t know if it is just coincidence or not, a fireball was reportedly seen over Tokyo on November 6. I’ve been looking without success for something a little more substantial than the reports I’ve seen about the sighting, and I don’t mean to imply they are wrong, just not very detailed.
Info source: NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program
It took, what, 12 hours to get from the moon to the Earth? whoa!!
err! the moon’s orbit…
Here is a link to a site with video of the fireball over Tokyo. No mention in the story of the asteroid passing, but a cool bit of camera work.
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196396-Massive-Fireball-Over-Tokyo
See that’s why the government needs to stop cutting the budget for NASA. They need to be able to have enough scopes around this world so that more people are able to look at our skies, It is a whole lot of space out there and there is no way with what we have for equipment can cover what needs to be watched.
Well that’s my 2 cents worth
Trudy