Asteroid headed for Earth burns up in spectacular fireball

An asteroid roughly one metre in diameter headed towards Earth, burned up in a spectacular fireball above Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday 4 September.

The space rock had eluded discovery until it was spotted by research technologist Jacqueline Fazekas at Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey, as late as Wednesday morning.

Labelled as 2024 RW1, the asteroid was predicted to burn up in the atmosphere, posing no risk to people on the ground.

“This is just the ninth asteroid that humankind has ever spotted before impact,” the European Space Agency said.