A mysterious object is headed for a fiery collision with earth next month, but scientists say there's nothing to fear. Astronomers who've spotted the object streaking through space say its too light to be a space rock. They think its probably the abandoned upper stage from a man-made rocket finally coming home. At the couple of meters( about 6.5 feet) in diameter, it will pose little danger to anyone on Earth, the European space Agency says.
The bits of the object that don't burn up on entering the atmosphere should come down harmlessly about 100km ( 62 miles) off the southern coast of Sri Lanka on November 13, the agency predicts. "But the show will be spectacular, since for a few seconds the object will become quite bright in the noon sky,"the European space Agency's Near Earth Object Coordination Centre wrote on its observers spotted the object, tagged WT1190F, on October 3, ESA said. Acording to the agency, they then realized it had been spotted before, in 2013, by the Catalina sky survey at the University of Arizona.
Now, Astronomers are champing at the bit to observe the object as it approaches and enters the atmosphere.
ESA Astronomer Marco Micheli said it will provide "an ideal opportunity to test our readiness for any possible future atmospheric entry events involving an asteroid, since the components of this scenario, from discovery to impact, are all very similar."
The agency says it thinks the object is probably a spent rocket booster because analysis of its movements suggest it has a density of about 10% that of water. " This is too low to be a natural space rock, but it is compatible with being a hollow shell, such as the spent upper stage of a rocket," the ESA said. If it turns out to be man-made space debris, it would be " a lost piece of space history that has come back to haunt us," said Harvard- Smithsonain Center for Astrophysics astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said in the science journal Nature.
