According to NASA, the roughly 3-foot (1-meter) asteroid was detected by stargazers in Arizona and subsequently fragmented over the Philippine coastline, mere hours after its initial discovery.
This celestial object, identified as 2024 RW1, marks the ninth instance of an asteroid being observed prior to its impact. Asteroids of comparable dimensions plummet towards Earth approximately every fortnight without presenting any significant threat.
Earlier, National aeronautics and space administration has also tweeted about the same, stating that the asteroid was expected to enter the atmosphere around 12: 40 EDT (10:10 PM IST) and create a fireball off the east coast of the northern Philippines. However, after that, there have been no further updates or follow-up reports on this.
The asteroid was discovered through the Catalina Sky Survey, which is is a NASA funded project supported by the Near Earth Object Observation Program (NEOO) under the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).
CSS is fully dedicated to discover and track near-Earth objects (NEOs) in an effort to meet the congressional mandate to catalogue at least 90 percent of the estimated population of NEOs larger than 140 meters, some of which classify as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) which pose an impact threat to Earth.
Nasa, giving the details about the organisation spot the object in space, said that the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program is a key element of NASA’s Planetary Defense Program, funding efforts to search for undiscovered NEOs using observatories around the world, calculate and refine NEO orbits, determine NEO physical properties and composition, and study NEO deflection and mitigation technologies. To achieve these objectives, the NEO Observations Program issues annual solicitations for proposals through NASA’s Yearly Opportunities for Research in Planetary Defense (YORPD) element of the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) solicitation. Major activities currently funded by the NEO Observations program include: