First asteroid discovery of 2014 hits Earth

In the wee hours of the new year, astronomers discovered a small asteroid — the very first asteroid discovery of the year — and apparently, just hours later, that very same asteroid plunged into our atmosphere and burned up.

Asteroid 2014 AA was found by astronomers working with the Mt. Lemmon Survey, who scan the sky nightly for asteroids, meteoroids and comets. 2014 AA showed up in their sights at roughly 1:20 a.m. Eastern Time on January 1st, and according to NASA, although the astronomers only had a few observations to work from, the asteroid appeared to be on "an Earth-impacting trajectory."

As reported by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC):

2008 TC3 was another 2-3 mtere asteroid that was discovered in the early hours of October 6th, 2008, just 19 hours before it plunged into the atmosphere and exploded over the Nubian Desert in Sudan. It was the very first Earth-impacting asteroid that we discovered before it hit. 2014 AA is now only the second asteroid that we've ever discovered before it hit us.

[ More Geekquinox: Astro-weather forecast for alien super-Earth planet: Cloudy and hot ]

The reason that we don't see many of these objects before they hit is because they're very small. Two to three metres wide is quite the boulder to us here on Earth, but compared to the vast space around us — a sphere with a circumference the size of the moon's orbit represents over 200 quadrillion cubic kilometres of space — they are tiny. Fortunately, the bigger an asteroid is, the easier it is to spot, and so that typically means we'll have a much earlier warning for something that could do a lot of damage. Still, the fact that 2014 AA was spotted at all is a testament to the dedication and skill of the astronomers that scan our skies for these dangers.

There are projects in the works to better protect us, though. NASA reactivated their WISE satellite in December, renaming it NEOWISE as it begins its search for near-Earth objects. In a complementary project to that, the B612 Foundation has plans to put their Sentinel spacecraft in orbit around the sun similar to Venus, to scan back towards Earth's orbit, looking to cover the space that's difficult to monitor from here. B612 is a private, non-profit foundation, so it needs our help to get Sentinel running, but with them, NASA and the ground-based surveys, we'll have a much better chance of protecting ourselves in the future.

Geek out with the latest in science and weather.
Follow @ygeekquinox on Twitter!