Don’t Panic: Small Asteroid CAQTDL2 is Approaching Earth

Astronomers have discovered that an asteroid is on its way to collide with Earth at thousands of kilometers per hour, likely somewhere east of the Philippines, over the ocean. Fortunately, this relatively small object won’t pose any harm and will simply burn up in the atmosphere in a fireball.

The asteroid, estimated to be about one meter in diameter, was a NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey. The asteroid has been named CAQTDL2 and is scheduled to impact Earth at approximately 16:45 GMT, 17:45 London time, 12:45 New York time, and at approximately 00:45 local time at the impact site in the Philippines.

It is currently estimated that CAQTDL2 will impact at a speed of 17.6 kilometers per second, or 63,360 kilometers per hour. Alan Fitzsimmons That’s average for such an object, says a researcher at Queen’s University in Belfast, UK. “Don’t be fooled by Hollywood movies where you see something screaming into the sky and you have time to run out the house, grab your cat, hop in your car and drive somewhere. You don’t have time for that,” he says.

Fortunately, no such evacuation is necessary. Although the impact would be dramatic and could shine as brightly as the moon in the night sky, it poses no danger to people on the ground. “An object this small can’t do any damage on the ground because it’s protected by the Earth’s atmosphere,” Fitzsimmons says. “It would just burn up harmlessly and then explode in a very impressive fireball.”

Fitzsimmons said two to three objects this size hit Earth each year, and early detection is becoming more common – astronomers first spotted a near-Earth asteroid before it fell to Earth in 2008. CAQTDL2 is the ninth asteroid to be accurately predicted to hit Earth.

“The really good thing about this is that our survey telescopes are now good enough to detect these objects as they approach and to provide a warning,” he says. “In other words, if this object was bigger and potentially threatening to people on the ground, it would have appeared brighter and projected farther. So this is a really cool demonstration that our current survey systems work really well. Right now, we’re probably averaging about one asteroid per year that gets detected before it hits the atmosphere, and survey systems are getting better and better.”

Not only is Earth developing and improving its early warning systems, but in 2022 NASA’s Dual Asteroid Reorientation Test (DART) spacecraft proved it could potentially save Earth from a catastrophic impact with a larger object. DART struck the 160-meter-wide moonlet Dimorphos, slowing it slightly, demonstrating that in theory such a disaster could be averted. Next month, the European Space Agency will launch the Hera mission to study the consequences of the impact up close and further our understanding of planetary defense.