Asteriod 2004 AS1 -- AMIGA Astronomy

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Subject: Asteriod 2004 AS1

Author:
Mikebuzz

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Date Posted: 18:41:04 02/24/04 Tue

Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting the world to a potential asteroid strike last month.
Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours.
It could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was no danger.
The procedures for raising the alarm in such circumstances are now being revised.
At the time, the president's team would have been putting the final touches to a speech he was due to make the following day at the headquarters of Nasa, the US space agency.
In it he planned to reset the course of manned spaceflight, sending it back to the Moon and on to Mars, but he could have had something very different to say.
At about 30m wide, the asteroid was cosmic small fry, not the type of thing to wipe out the dinosaurs or threaten our species, but still big enough to cause considerable damage after exploding in the atmosphere.
And 2004 AS1? It turned out to be bigger than anyone had thought - about 500m wide. It eventually passed the Earth at a distance of about 12 million km - 32 times the Earth-Moon distance, posing no danger to us whatsoever.

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