Shocking! This wild asteroid appeared from nowhere, and headed for Earth; scientists hit by blind spot
On July 25, 2019, an asteroid was barrelling towards the Earth but nobody had a clue. As the asteroid 2019 OK approached the Earth, it was only 30 minutes before the asteroid came closest to Earth that the scientific community received the first alert. Why? Because the asteroid was making its way from the blind spot of the Earth — the direction of the Sun. As the brightly-lit Sun makes it impossible to observe anything in the sky, the asteroid avoided detection. Luckily, this asteroid was not aiming for the Earth and no collisions occurred that day. However, it did raise the fear that if an asteroid targeting the Earth did appear from the direction of the Sun and we had too little time to take action, what would happen? Read on to find out.
Even with just 30 minutes in hand, one space observatory did not give up on spotting the asteroid 2019 OK to gather as much information about it as possible. It was the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the team of astronomers under Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin that tracked it, as per a report by SciTechDaily. Within minutes, the radar scientists honed in on the asteroid and the team began collecting data at a lightning speed. That was in 2019. Now, on June 10, 2022, her findings were finally published in the Planetary Science Journal and it has highlighted how small a notice period is enough to assess risk factors and to start a possible anti-asteroid defense mechanism.
“It was a real challenge. No one saw it until it was practically passing by, so when we got the alert, we had very little time to act. Even so, we were able to capture a lot of valuable information,” Zambrano-Marin told SciTechDaily.
It was important to collect data on any asteroid making a close approach to the
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