Title: The atmospheric impact trajectory of asteroid 2014 AA Author: D. Farnocchia, S. R. Chesley, P. G. Brown, P. W. Chodas
Near-Earth asteroid 2014 AA entered the Earth's atmosphere on 2014 January 2, only 21 hours after being discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. In this paper we compute the trajectory of 2014 AA by combining the available optical astrometry, seven ground-based observations over 69 minutes, and the International Monitoring system detection of the atmospheric impact infrasonic airwaves in a least-squares orbit estimation filter. The combination of these two sources of observations results in a tremendous improvement in the orbit uncertainties. The impact time is 3:05 UT with a 1-sigma uncertainty of 6 min, while the impact location corresponds to a west longitude of 44.7 deg and a latitude of 13.1 deg with a 1-sigma uncertainty of 140 km. The minimum impact energy estimated from the infrasound data and the impact velocity result in an estimated minimum mass of 22.6 t. By propagating the trajectory of 2014 AA backwards we find that the only window for finding precovery observations is for the three days before its discovery.
The first new asteroid identified this year didn't last long. Asteroid 2014 AA was spotted by a telescope early New Year's morning, and fizzled up over the Atlantic Ocean a day later. Read more
Early Wednesday morning (Jan. 1, 2014), while New Year's 2014 celebrations were still underway in the United States, the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., collected a single track of observations with an immediate follow-up on what was possibly a very small asteroid -- 2 to 3 metres in size -- on a potential impact trajectory with Earth. Read more
An Asteroid Hit Earths Atmosphere Last Night Just Hours after It Was Discovered
An asteroid with a near-Earth orbit was discovered yesterday, which is great news for anyone who thinks we should make a serious effort to have a warning system in place for potentially dangerous flying space rocks. Unfortunately, it was discovered right as it was about to slam into the Earths atmosphere, which makes us glad it was relatively small. Read more
Discovered on New Year's Eve by a telescope in Arizona, a small asteroid struck Earth somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean - apparently unnoticed - about 25 hours later. Read more
Ed ~ as yet it is not certain that an impact occured
The 2 - 4 metre wide asteroid 2014 AA made a close pass (0.001 lunar distances, 0.0000 AU), travelling at 38.74 km/second, to the Earth-Moon system on the 2nd January 2014 @ 02:33 UT ±01:05.
Orbital elements:
2014 AA Earth MOID = 0.0000 AU
Epoch 2014 Jan. 1.0 TT = JDT 2456658.5 MPC
M 324.30925 (2000.0) P Q
n 0.78273412 Peri. 52.35440 -0.89800711 -0.43929392
a 1.1660751 Node 101.57475 +0.39536118 -0.83018926
e 0.2149211 Incl. 1.43759 +0.19306155 -0.34322973
P 1.26 H 30.9 G 0.15 U 2