Summary

2024 RW1 was the ninth asteroid discovered to be on an impact trajectory with Earth while still in space. The object was found by the Catalina Sky Survey on the morning UT hours of 4 November 2024, and impacted our planet about 11 hours later over the Philippine Sea. 

Discovery circumstances and follow-up

The second impactor of the year was first reported by J. B. Fazekas from detections obtained by the Catalina Sky Survey's Mt. Lemmon station in Arizona (USA). Already from the discovery observations, all imminent impact alert systems, including ESA's Meerkat, promptly reported a possible impact, with a probability of about 20%. Within less than an hour, follow-up observations from other stations confirmed the impact with certainty. Nearly 200 additional astrometric observations were collected by observatories worldwide over the next 10 hours, until the object entered Earth's shadow about 37 minutes before the predicted impact time. The complete dataset led to an accurate localization of the impact point to a location just offshore the Eastern coast of the island of Luzon, in the Philippines. 

Trajectory in Space

In the video below, the autumn equinox points down and slightly to the right of the image, not fully aligned with the Earth by just a few days. The view is tilted by approximately 30 degrees above the Ecliptic.

Trajectory Relative to the Earth

The video below shows the trajectory in space of 2024 RW1 in the hours prior to its impact with Earth. The size of the asteroid is greatly magnified in order to make it visible.

2D Impact Corridor

The plot below shows the entry point on the ground, without including the atmospheric effects.

3D Impact Corridor

The highlighted area in the animation below represents the 1-σ (in red) and the 3-σ (in orange) fall area of the propagated object without including the atmospheric effects.

Atmospheric phase details 

The fireball occurred over the ocean and was seen from several places of Luzon Island, mainly Manila metro and along the northern east coast. Several visual reports, including videos and pictures were sent to the International Meteor Organization (Event #4885-2024) The object was the fastest impactor discovered so far, with an impact velocity of 20.6 km/s: this was largely due to its unusually high orbital eccentricity of 0.7. It entered with an entry angle of 40 degrees from the vertical. According to CNEOS, the disintegration took place at an altitude of 25 km, traveling at a speed of 19.7 km/s. The total energy emitted was 6.2×10^10 J, and the estimated impact energy was 0.2 kton. In CBET 5438, Peter Jenniskens points out that lightcurve characteristics and orbital properties suggest it may have been a CM2 carbonaceous-chondrite-type object.

Search for meteorites

No meteorites could be recovered due to the location of the impact point over oceanic waters.