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Asteroid collision with Earth ruled out by NASA – hours later, it smashes into Caribbean

NASA monitoring asteroid set to 'skim past earth' says reporter

A small asteroid shot towards Earth at 14.9 kilometres per second, and NASA admitted it did not know it was coming. The space rock known as 2019 MO was just three metres wide and exploded when it hit the planet’s atmosphere on 22 July above the Caribbean, but the way it approached unexpectedly reaffirms the need for more eyes on the sky. NASA said: “When first spotted, 2019 MO was about 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) from Earth - farther out than the orbit of our Moon.
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'Dangerous' space rocks being 'thrust' towards Earth by the Sun

Asteroids heating up in Earth’s orbit are beginning to face away from the Sun and change their trajectory towards Earth, with NASA scientists saying that space radiation is acting “like a small thruster”.

PhD meteor specialist, Helena Bates, said asteroids change direction due to a phenomenon called the Yarkovsky effect.

She said: “The Yarkovsky effect is basically when the Sun heats up one side of the rotating body so the asteroid is rotating as it orbits the Sun.

“And as one side heats up, it kind of absorbs heat and then, as it rotates, that side will begin to face away from the Sun and will radiate that heat outwards.

“That basically acts like a small thruster to push the asteroid into a slightly different orbit.

“And because the amount of heat that the asteroid absorbs is to do with things like composition, what the asteroids made of, which we don’t know, that means it’s really really hard to predict the effect of the Sun.”
“This was roughly the equivalent of spotting something the size of a gnat from a distance of 310 miles (500 kilometres).”

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