Tiny asteroid discovered hours before impacting Earth, becoming fourth 'immediate impactor' of 2024

A tiny asteroid was discovered today (December 3) on a collision course with Earth and is expected to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The asteroid is about 70 centimeters wide and was discovered by astronomers at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, a NOIRLab facility that houses two radio telescopes and over a dozen optical telescopes. The small space rock is expected to hit Earth’s atmosphere around 11:15 a.m. ET (1615 GMT) today.

The asteroid is completely harmless and is expected to produce a “beautiful fireball in the sky over northern Siberia,” the European Space Agency wrote on X.

The asteroid, tentatively named C0WEPC5, is now the fourth “imminent impact” discovered in 2024, meaning an asteroid that was discovered within a few hours of its expected impact. It was only the 11th confirmed impending impactor overall (a twelfth has yet to be confirmed, according to physicist Richard Moissl).

Incoming! The 12th imminent impactor ever detected before entering the atmosphere is on track to produce a harmless meteor over Siberia in approximately seven hours (~16:15 UTC +/- 5 minutes). With an estimated size of approximately 70cm in diameter, it will create a beautiful bright fireball #C0WECP5 pic.twitter.com/yY8IpUlZHeDecember 3, 2024

The third impending impactor was asteroid 2024 UQ, discovered in Hawaii on October 22 as part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey. It was discovered just two hours before it burned up over the Pacific Ocean over Hawaii.

The first of these impending impactors this year was 2024 BX1, a 1-meter-wide asteroid that burnt up harmlessly over Berlin in January. The second, 2024 RW1, exploded over the Philippines on September 4 in a spectacular fireball that was captured on cameras and shared widely on social media.

The European Space Agency and other space agencies operate a variety of sensor networks around Earth to keep an eye on incoming objects like C0WEPC5.

Space agencies around the world are increasing their efforts to track and catalog the multitude of asteroids and other objects orbiting or passing near Earth through programs such as the ATLAS survey, the Catalina Sky Survey , ESA’s NEOCC and others.

NASA is also working on a new infrared telescope called NEO Surveyor that will search for potentially threatening near-Earth objects.

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