Asteroid 2006 WB is scheduled to pass close to Earth on Tuesday, and astronomers say it's one of about 40,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs), but it's not even the most interesting.
Lowell Observatory Astronomer and Asteroid Expert Nick Moskowitz Little is known about the asteroid being so close to Thanksgiving, he said. This is not because the threat to Earth is increasing, but because new NEOs are being discovered frequently as technology advances.
“These things happen so often that I can't keep up. And this is really a testament to the power of telescopic surveys, which are scanning the night sky every night looking for new objects. is doing very well in that regard,” he said.
The European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Center recently featured notable NEOs that came astronomically close to Earth this fall, including the 2006 WB.
There are approximately 40,000 NEOs, with more than 2,300 discovered in 2024 alone.
2006 WB is estimated to be about 100 meters (380 feet) in diameter, and is expected to be just over twice the distance from Earth to the Moon on November 26th. Another asteroid, 2010 WS, is getting closer. It reached Earth last week, and estimates of its size overlap.
“The uncertainty associated with the size of these objects is that neither object is well studied. We don't know much about them. There is a large margin of error in their actual size,” Moskowitz said. he said.
Asteroid 2006 WM is thought to be a stadium-sized object, but even that is an estimate. According to NASA's NEO database, it could be even larger, exceeding 500 feet, or smaller.
That sounds like bad news because large NEOs pass close to Earth all the time, but that's okay. No, it really is.
“A lot of these close encounters you don't know until they happen, right? “That's because objects are discovered when they're easiest to see, and they're easiest to see when they're closest to us,” he said.
As technology has advanced, so has the discovery and tracking of NEOs entering Earth's neighborhoods. According to ESA, October was a great month for NEO discoveries, with more than 450 new objects confirmed, the most for any month this year.
A small asteroid was recently discovered hours before it hit Earth. This is especially interesting because as these asteroids break up on Earth, scientists track them to the ground. Moskowitz said this is like a natural version of a sample return mission.
“We don't need to send a billion dollar spacecraft to take samples from the surface and bring them back. But if we instead observe these events and set up the right tools to monitor them. “We see these effects occurring with some frequency,” he said.
Another sigh of relief for earthlings is that close tracking will advance as technology advances.
““We're really in this kind of interesting sea change in astronomy where the ability to collect data is outpacing the ability to analyze data,” Moskowitz said. “We can collect more gigabytes of data than we know what to do with.”
Moskowitz said there could be additional lead time once the asteroid discovery is complete. Vera Rubin ObservatoryThe 8-meter telescope in Chile is now online. The observatory, funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, is scheduled to begin operations next year.
Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, is also working to make astronomical research available to the public.
The observatory's Marley Foundation Astronomy Discovery Center opened in November. This is the first arts and science center of its kind open to all ages.
“The really special thing we bring here is that we are an active research institution, with more than a dozen astronomers currently conducting research, and we are bringing that to our door. That's what we're trying to communicate to the public that's coming in, and what we're trying to share with them: 'This is the cutting edge of astronomy,''' Moskowitz said.
