Asteroid lands in The Philippines
A small asteroid is on a collision course with Earth today, but don’t worry. It will burn up harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere when it strikes, scientists say.
The European Space Agency (ESA) says a 3-foot (1-meter) asteroid will strike the atmosphere and burn up harmlessly on Wednesday (Sept. 4) around 12:46 p.m. ET (1646 GMT) above the western Pacific Ocean near Luzon Island in the Philippines.
The asteroid, known as 2024 RW1, was discovered today by research technologist Jacqueline Fazekas with the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Study, a NASA-funded observatory near Tucson, Arizona dedicated to tracking and cataloging near-Earth objects. It is only the ninth asteroid that has been spotted prior to impact.
At around noon our time, the asteroid streaked across the night sky on the Philippines coastline, with users taking to X to post the phenomenon, linked here; https://x.com/raymongdullana/status/1831378111453392958
(image is AI generated and not to scale)
