The Minor Planet Center listed impact as occurring around 2 January 2014 05:00 UT ± 10 hours. Independent calculations by Bill Gray, the Minor Planet Center and Steve Chesley at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory verified that impact was virtually certain. Designated 2014 AA, which would make it the first asteroid discovery of 2014, the track of observations on the object allowed only an uncertain orbit to be calculated. Such an object would have posed no danger to the ground though small meteorites may have survived passage through the atmosphere.

Scientists estimate that several dozen asteroids in the 6–12 m (20–39 ft) size range fly by Earth at a distance closer than the moon every year, but only a fraction of these are actually detected. Prior to 2014 AA, we managed to identify 2008 TC3, which burned up over Sudan in Africa in 2008. Like 2014 AA, that one was also discovered only a day before it burned up in our atmosphere. Astronomers have spotted the first new asteroid of 2014 — a car-size space rock that apparently slammed harmlessly into Earth's atmosphere just after the New Year began.

Several sources confirm that the first discovered asteroid in 2014, designated 2014 AA, entered Earth’s atmosphere late Jan. 1 (Jan. 2 Universal time) over the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

2014 RC is a sub-kilometer asteroid, classified as near-Earth object of the Apollo group. Tonight brings the peak of the best meteor shower you have probably never seen. The 19th-magnitude object struck Earth 19 hours later. Tag: 2014 AA. Asteroid 2014 AA Hits Earth (And Was The Second Rock Ever To Have Been Spotted Before It Landed) Huffington Post UK.
The brightness of the asteroid is between 18.8 and 19.1 Mv in the images. Near-Earth asteroid 2014 AA entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 2014 January 2, only 21 h after being discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. Asteroid 2014 AA was the first discovered asteroid this year and it is the second time in history that an asteroid was identified and tracked before its impact with Earth. With an absolute magnitude of 26.8, the asteroid is about 11–25 meters in diameter depending on the albedo.


M.P.E.C. …

2014 AA impact site identified?

Sky and Telescope magazine is reporting that Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario) has made a preliminary identification of the … More. If it fell in the ocean there is a good chance that no one directly witnessed it though the signature of its resulting fireball may be … Catalina Sky Survey / NASA

An asteroid first sighted yesterday has most likely plunged directly into our planet's atmosphere and burned up. Am 13. This sequence of discovery images of Asteroid 2014 AA was taken between 0618 and 0646 UT (between 1:18 and 1:46 am EST) January 1, 2014. The asteroid is approximately the diameter of the Chelyabinsk meteor, and passed almost as close to Earth as 367943 Duende did in 2013. The asteroid is (well, was) named 2014 AA, the very first asteroid discovered this year.



The field of view is about 5 arcminutes across.

Using a poorly determined orbit, the JPL Small-Body Database listed a 3-sigma solution with impact occurring around 2 January 2014 02:33 UT ± 1 hour and 5 minutes. Image credit: CSS/LPL/UA "The most likely impact location of the object was just off the coast of West Africa at about 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST) Jan. 1," NASA officials wrote in a press release Thursday.