An asteroid has lit up the sky over the Channel in the early morning after scientists accurately predicted its strike – only the seventh time that has happened.
The European Space Agency said on Sunday night that the 1-metre-sized object would enter Earth’s atmosphere and strike the surface around the French city of Rouen. The BBC then reported that it was seen over the Channel, creating a stunning shooting star effect.
The ESA named the small asteroid that entered the Earth’s atmosphere on Monday, Sar2667, adding that its prediction was “a sign of the rapid advancements in global asteroid detection capabilities”. The BBC reported that the International Meteor Organization, a Belgium-based non-profit organisation, said the object would have entered about 4km (2.5 miles) from the French coast, and would create a “fireball” effect.
The ESA’s scientists have described how the previous prediction – on 19 November last year – came about, explaining that the “initial discovery of asteroid 2022 WJ1 came from the Catalina Sky Survey – one of the major projects dedicated to the discovery and follow-up of near-Earth objects”.
They said the asteroid was first captured by Catalina’s telescope and, after four observations over a period of about half an hour, it was reported to the Minor Planet Centre.
“These four observations were enough to map out the asteroid’s path in the sky,”they said, adding that – within a few minutes of the data being published – ESA’s own internal monitoring software had suggested the object was likely to hit somewhere in North America in the following two to three hours.
“Following the potential impact notifications, observers at Catalina and elsewhere across the US got follow-up observations of the new asteroid. Less than 30 minutes from the initial trigger, the impact was confirmed with excellent precision: the small asteroid, likely less than a metre in diameter, was going to impact somewhere between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, near the US-Canada border.”
It was predicted to impact between about 8.30 and 9.30am UK-time. “At exactly the predicted time, a ~1-metre asteroid struck the atmosphere becoming a brilliant fireball above the expected location,” they said.
