Astronomers have been frenzied over WT1190F’s arrival because it gives them a rare opportunity to study how incoming objects interact with Earth’s atmosphere, Gizmodo reports. WT1190F’s approach also comes at a time in which NASA is tracking near-Earth asteroids, but there is not now a similar program for objects farther away from Earth.
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Most, if not all, of the object is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, and whatever’s left will hurtle into the Indian Ocean.
Richard Kowalski, senior research specialist with the Catalina Sky Survey at University of Arizona, Tucson, wrote in a Facebook post with a map projecting the area where the debris could hit that it was discovered on October 3 by Rose Matheny.
However, astronomy software developer Bill Gray added: “I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it”. There is lots of man-made space junk but WT1190F is the first ever to crash into Earth.
Gerhard Drolshagen, co-manager of the European Space Agency’s near-Earth objects office in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, told Nature News the systems in place to detect objects in space that may or may not represent a threat to Earth are working. WT1190F, with a highly elliptical orbit tracing twice as far out as the Earth-Moon distance, is a pretty special piece of trash. “An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002, was eventually determined to be discarded segment of Saturn V rocket that launched the first men to land on the Moon”. Nature speculated that the debris could date back to the Apollo era. Researchers are now tracking only 20 or so artificial objects in distant orbits, says Gareth Williams, an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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The space junk will crash into Earth next month. “I think that has to change”.
