2024 RW1: Tiny asteroid strikes Earth and disintegrates above the Philippines

The asteroid struck Earth and burned up in the atmosphere east of the Philippines. Astronomers spotted it just hours before it streaked across the sky in a bright fireball, but many on the ground couldn’t see it because of cloudy skies caused by Typhoon Enteng.

The asteroid, estimated to be about one meter in diameter, was a NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey. It was originally designated CAQTDL2 and was later renamed 2024 RW1.

As expected, the asteroid struck the east of the northernmost island of the Philippine archipelago at around 1645 GMT, 1745 London time, 1245 New York time, or 0045 local time. The impact speed was predicted to be 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.

Luckily, no evacuations were necessary: NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office posted on social media that the asteroid “safely impacted Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Something that small wouldn’t do any damage on the ground because the Earth’s atmosphere blocks that,” Fitzsimmons said. Video shared on social media from Cagayan province in the northern tip of the Philippines shows a flickering green fireball appearing behind a cloud, followed by an orange tail, before disappearing a few seconds later.

☄️? Wow! The newly discovered 1-1.5m diameter asteroid 2024 RW1 (discovered by US near-Earth asteroid hunters) burned up over the Philippines just hours after it was first sighted.

This asteroid was not a danger, but if it had been, it could have been a warning to hunker down and take cover. pic.twitter.com/Fht4yqRsBP

— Dr. Robin George Andrews ☄️ (@SquigglyVolcano) September 4, 2024

Fitzsimmons said two to three objects this size hit Earth every year, and early detection is becoming more common – astronomers detected the first near-Earth asteroid before it fell to Earth in 2008. 2024 RW1 will be 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 in detail and further our understanding of planetary defense.