updated 4:00 p.m. MT, Mon., Oct. 6, 2008
A very small asteroid will streak into the skies over Sudan tonight, astronomers announced. It is expected to burn up in the atmosphere, creating a show.
It will not strike Earth.
It is the first time an asteroid "impact" has been predicted with near certainty, astronomers said.
The space rock is thought to be 3 to 15 feet (1 to 5 meters) in diameter and poses "no risk to those on the ground," said David Morrison of NASA's Ames Research Center. A similar-sized object during the day would likely go unnoticed, he said.
The fiery entry will appear like a very bright shooting star known as a fireball, or what astronomers call a bolide.
"A typical meteor comes from an object the size of a grain of sand," explained Gareth Williams of the Minor Planet Center. "This meteor will be a real humdinger in comparison!"
The object, named 8TA9D69 or asteroid 2008 TC3, was discovered by an ongoing survey at Mount Lemon run by the University of Arizona. The atmospheric entry will occur at 10:46 p.m. ET Monday (5:46 a.m. local time Tuesday) over northern Sudan, according to Steve Chesley of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The fireball is expected to be visible from eastern Africa as the rock zooms eastward toward the Red Sea.
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"We're eager for observations from astronomers near the asteroid's approach path. We really hope that someone will manage to photograph it," Williams said.
Based on 26 optical observations, "the probability of impact is between 99.8 percent and 100 percent," said Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa. "In practice the impact can be considered sure and is for tonight."
Milani continued: "The effect of this atmospheric impact will be the release, in either a single shot or maybe a sequence of explosions, of about 1 kiloton of energy. This means that the damage on the ground is expected to be zero."
This report was supplemented by msnbc.com.
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