Note: this topic is from 10/08/2008. Thanks neverdem.
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Posted on 10/08/2008 6:28:48 PM PDT by neverdem
A space rock a few metres across exploded over northern Sudan early in the morning of Tuesday 7 October. The small asteroid mostly disintegrated when it collided with Earth's atmosphere, but fragments may have reached the surface.
Such an event happens roughly every three months. But this is "the first time we were able to discover and predict an impact before the event", says Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) programme at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Incoming! The story began on Sunday evening, when astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, discovered the incoming object, dubbed 2008 TC3. By the next morning, three organizations — NASA's NEO office, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and NeoDys in Pisa, Italy — confirmed that the asteroid was racing towards Earth. Calculations predicted the object would streak through the sky above a Sudanese village called Station Six, which has a population of about ten, Yeomans says.
Even as a network of astronomers monitored the incoming asteroid, there has been only one visual report so far of its re-entry. A pilot with the Dutch airline KLM, who was flying about 1,400 kilometres southwest of the predicted impact site, apparently saw a quick flash, says Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona in Tucson. No one else has reported seeing the incoming fireball — most likely because the meteoroid crossed into Earth's shadow 56 minutes before impact. Only those close to, or directly below, the impact site would have seen the fireball, Beshore says.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
It was either Biden or Obama flaming out.
Ping
Obama is flaming? (Hey, you said it, not me).
Any video of this asteroid?
Why could they not track the credit derivative asteroid coming back to Earth on a 90 degree collission course...it is burning with a 12,000 mile tail and will make contact. How did they miss it??
Eventually I figure that they will set up a limited band, laser scanner, that will scan the sky somewhat like an electron gun used to scan the screen of an old TV. Doing this many times, wide angle telescopes would look for any repeated reflected light scattering on that band.
While it might not give an accurate size, direction of travel or distance within the range of the light, it would help them target suspected objects and help them strongly narrow down the sky to watch.
A similar technique could be used to examine upcoming meteor showers in an effort to gauge the density of the shower.
nothing video-wise available.. the KLM pilot ‘flash’ report is the only visual reported so far.
it didn’t have the gravitas,, uhhh, mass,
Goodness gracious!
Ask Larry Sinclair.
Note: this topic is from 10/08/2008. Thanks neverdem.
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