Agencies, Asteroids and Weather

The folks at Sandia National Laboratory are theorizing that dust from asteroids may have a bigger effect on the weather here on Earth than previously believed. The story of how they gathered the evidence to support this conclusion is a small but powerful tale of interagency cooperation. On Sept. 3, 2004, the Defense Department's space-based infrared sensors detected an asteroid about 10 meters wide, at an altitude of 75 kilometers, descending off the coast of Antarctica. Visible-light sensors built by Sandia picked up the intruder as it turned into a fireball 56 kilometers above Earth. Then five infrasound stations--used by Los Alamos National Laboratory to detect nuclear explosions anywhere in the world--registered acoustic waves from the speeding asteroid. Next, NASA’s multispectral polar orbiting sensor picked up evidence of debris formed by the disintegrating space rock. Seven and a half hours later, scientists analyzed a cloud in the upper stratosphere over Antarctica and determined that it was made up of leftover material from the asteroid.