25m wide meteorite skims past Earth on Halloween night

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) meteorite early warning system detected a 25-meter-diameter meteorite passing by Earth on the night of October 31.

A 25-meter-diameter meteorite was detected by NASA's Scout early warning system. Photo: Mirror.

The Halloween meteor flew past Earth last night after being identified by NASA's new space monitoring system called Scout five days ago, according to Mirror.

A telescope in Hawaii first spotted the object on October 25. Data uploaded to the Scout system allowed software to predict the asteroid’s trajectory within 10 minutes, including its path to Earth. Scout immediately alerted three other telescopes to continue observing, eliminating possibilities and eventually confirming the asteroid would pass safely by Earth.

The Halloween asteroid, which is up to 25 meters wide, flew past Earth at a distance of 498,897 km, about 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

“When a telescope first spots a moving object, all you know is that it’s a little dot moving across the sky. You have no idea how far away it is,” said astronomer Paul Chodas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who runs the Scout program. “The more telescopes you point at an object, the more data you get, and the more certain you are about its size and direction. But sometimes you don’t have a lot of time to make those observations.”

Scout is designed to track near-Earth objects that could potentially collide with the planet so that NASA can take action. The system is currently in its testing phase, and the Halloween asteroid is the first one Scout has detected. The system will be fully operational later this year.

"If you know in advance, you can divert the asteroid with a small explosion when it is billions of kilometers away before hitting Earth," said Ed Lu, head of the organization to prevent the risk from asteroid B612.

According to VNE