Catalina Sky Survey Discovers First Asteroid of 2014

The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson discovered a very small but the first asteroid of 2014 on a potential impact trajectory with Earth, according to a NASA press release.

The track of observations on the newly discovered asteroid allowed researchers to calculate only a part of an "uncertain orbit." The asteroid has been named 2014 AA, which confirms that it is the first asteroid discovered in the New Year. According to calculations, researchers claim that the cosmic rock may have entered the Earth's atmosphere between 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) Wednesday and 6 a.m. PST (9 a.m. EST) Thursday.

The asteroid measured 7 to 10 feet and researchers speculate that it was very unlikely that the small rock survived atmospheric entry intact. They drew this conclusion because 2014 AA is similar in size to the  2008 TC3 and the latter completely "broke up" when it entered the Earth's atmosphere in 2008.  Both these asteroids are the only two that were discovered just before hitting Earth.

"2014 AA was unlikely to have survived atmospheric entry intact, as it was comparable in size to 2008 TC3, the only other example of an impacting object observed prior to atmospheric entry," a Minor Planet Electronic Circular announcement said, Discovery News reported.

Peter Brown, from the University of Western Ontario, said that 2014 AA triggered very weak detections at three infrasound stations. According to his calculations the space rock slammed into the atmosphere near 40° west, 12° north. That location, about 1,900 miles (3,000 km) east of Caracas, Venezuela, is far from any landmass.

"The energy is very hard to estimate with much accuracy - the signals are all weak and buried in noise," Brown explained in a Sky and Telescope report. "And yet, we're lucky that the event happened just after local midnight, when winds are calmest. Had this occurred in the middle of the day I doubt we would see any signals at all."

Further assumptions state that the impact energy was equivalent to the explosive power of 500 to 1,000 tons of TNT.