Syzdekistan

Spaceweather.com has reported that the 3 meter diameter asteroid 2008TC3 hit the earth’s atmosphere over the Sudan. Impact speed was calculated to be about 12 km per second which is fairly slow. While asteroids this size hit the earth a few times a year and result in a bright fireball, this is the first time the asteroid was discovered before the impact. Discoverers were the NASA Catalina Sky Survey for Near Earth Objects at Mt. Lemmon Arizona. The object was discovered and the orbit determined with some accuracy on October 6, 2008. The orbits closest passage to earth was calculated to be 5866 km. Since this is measured from the center of mass of the earth and the earth’s nominal diameter is 6378 km, astronomers knew they had a collision. Due to uncertainties in the orbit, there was a possibility that there would be a miss but that probably was quite low.

Spaceweather.com reports this confirmation of the impact:

The following potentially confirming report comes from Jacob Kuiper, General Aviation meteorologist at the National Weather Service in the Netherlands: “Half an hour before the predicted impact of asteroid 2008 TC3, I informed an official of Air-France-KLM at Amsterdam airport about the possibility that crews of their airliners in the vicinity of impact would have a chance to see a fireball. And it was a success! I have received confirmation that a KLM airliner, roughly 750 nautical miles southwest of the predicted atmospheric impact position, has observed a short flash just before the expected impact time 0246 UTC. Because of the distance it was not a very large phenomenon, but still a confirmation that some bright meteor has been seen in the predicted direction. Projected on an infrared satellite-image of Meteosat-7 of 0300 UTC, I have indicated the position of the plane (+) and the predicted impact area in Sudan (0).”

Hopefully, some closer observations were made. Monday’s re-entry of the 30,000 pound Jules Verne spacecraft over the Pacific Ocean was very well documented and quite spectacular to the crews of two aircraft that observed its fiery demise.

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