NASA Public Affairs Officer Brandi Dean conducts an interview with Lead Scientist For Planetary Small Bodies Paul Abell about the meteorite that hit Russia and the asteroid flyby that took place on Feb. 15.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is a small near-Earth asteroid that passed very close to Earth on Feb. 15, so close that it passed inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. The flyby provides a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.
A meteor, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, entered the atmosphere and disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 14. The trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which hours later made its flyby of Earth, indicating that it was a completely unrelated object. The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia.
NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called “Spaceguard,” discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.
Abell also talks briefly about orbital debris, or “space junk,” which is tracked as it orbits the Earth.
