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Now the full article
By Ian O’Neill
A near-Earth object that could be human-made has just been discovered hurtling toward us. On Wednesday, the object called 2010 AL30 will fly by Earth at a distance of just 80,000 miles (130,000 kilometers). That’s only one-third of the way from here to the moon — that is, very close.
It will miss us, and if it did hit us, it wouldn’t do any damage anyway, but I managed to pick up on some chatter between planetary scientists and found out that the “asteroid,” or whatever it is, gives us a new standard: A 10-meter-wide (33-foot-wide) asteroid can be detected two days before it potentially hits Earth. A pretty useful warning, if you ask me.
Expert astronomers will be able to observe it shining with a brightness of a 14th-magnitude star (the approximate brightness of Pluto’s weak glow as seen from Earth) as it dashes through the constellations of Orion, Taurus, and Pisces. (Further details about the orbit of 2010 AL30 can be found on NASA’s Solar System Dynamics Web site).
What makes this near-Earth object, or NEO, special is that it has an orbital period of almost exactly one year. This fact has led some scientists to speculate that 2010 AL30 could be an artificial object and not an asteroid. After all, there’s a lot of space junk up there. There’s every possibility that it could be a spent rocket booster or some other chunk from a spacecraft.
But it could just be coincidence that the NEO has the same orbital period as Earth; it might just be another asteroid.
According to Alan W. Harris, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute, apart from 2010 AL30’s coincidental orbital period, there is nothing else to suggest it’s anything other than a naturally occurring near-Earth asteroid.
“[2010 AL30 is] unlikely to be artificial, its orbit doesn’t resemble any useful spacecraft trajectory, and its encounter velocity with the Earth is not unusually low,” Harris said in a posting to The Minor Planet Mailing List. Harris also points out that 2010 AL30 has a “perfectly ordinary Earth-crossing orbit.” In other words, it looks like any other near-Earth asteroid.
In reply, Andrea Boattini of the Catalina Sky Survey made the interesting point that 2010 AL30 is a great example of how much of a warning we’d have for an object of this size that’s headed for Earth. After all, the discovery was only announced on Monday, two days before its Earth encounter.
It is worth noting that even if 2010 AL30 did hit Earth, it would most likely explode high in the atmosphere (with the energy of a small nuclear bomb), posing little danger to anyone on the ground. Impacts of this size happen every year.
The discovery of this 10-meter-wide object is testament to the increasing capabilities of the international community of asteroid hunters. When 2010 AL30 does make its closest approach on Wednesday, they can take a more detailed look at the small visitor, verifying whether it is indeed an asteroid or an artificial object. However, the consensus seems to be that it’s a natural inhabitant of our solar system, passing safely through our neighborhood, providing asteroid hunters with an interesting target to study.
Sources: Spaceweather.com, Remanzacco Observatory. NASA estimates that the object will make its closest approach to Earth at 7:47 a.m. ET Wednesday
