On 4 September at 16:39 UTC (18:39 CEST), the small asteroid 2024 RW1 entered Earth’s atmosphere near the Philippines, exploding in a fireball witnessed by people in the region.
Shortly after its discovery 10 hours earlier, astronomers around the world, including those from ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, began to track the asteroid and submit new observations to the Minor Planet Center to help narrow down the time and location of impact.
These are the final observations of the asteroid acquired by ESA’s astronomers shortly before it entered Earth’s shadow, around 37 minutes before impact, using a telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, part of the Las Cumbres Observatory network.
These three images were acquired at 15:52 and 15:53 UTC on 4 September 2024, roughly 45 minutes before impact, while the asteroid was at a distance of approximately 52 000 km from the telescope.