Tiny asteroid on path to hit Earth burned up in atmosphere

(NewsNation) — A small asteroid that was on a path to collide with Earth burned up after entering the atmosphere near the Philippines on Wednesday.

The European Space Agency reported the three-foot asteroid burned up harmlessly after entering our planet’s atmosphere around 12:46 pm ET.

The asteroid, known as 2024 RW1, burned up above the western Pacific Ocean near Luzon Island in the Philippines. It was discovered by a researcher with the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project.

The small asteroid was only the ninth to be spotted before impact. It was found through a NASA-funded observatory near Tuscon, Ariz., that tracks and catalogs near-Earth objects.

Videos posted to social media showed a bright green fireball visible from the Philippines and NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office said multiple sensors detected the impact.

That office is part of a major priority for space agencies, searching for near-Earth asteroids and tracking them. In 2022, NASA crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos in an effort to knock it off its path.

The project, which succeeded, was a test to see if the agency would be able to knock a potentially hazardous asteroid headed toward Earth off track.

It did have unexpected consequences, however. Simulations suggest debris from the crash site could result in a meteor shower years after the impact. But the shooting stars won’t be visible to Earth; instead, they will create a meteor shower on Mars.