As I continued to make observations throughout the night, it appeared to be moving slightly faster. And this indicates that the object is close to the Earth. 

 

As with any other asteroid, Richard reported what he’s found to the Minor Planet Centre. 

 

I got up in the morning about 7 o’clock and I had a message on the computer saying, “Could not compute an orbit for a particular object.” I grabbed the observations of this object and I computed an orbit and it was immediately apparent, right then, that that object was going to hit the Earth. And, sort of ominous fashion, it said it was in 19 hours. 

 

Following a strict written protocol, Tim quickly reported the findings to NASA’s asteroid investigation team in California. 

 

We got a call from Tim Spahr, at the Minor Planet Centre, saying we had an impacter coming in, in less than 24 hours. That woke me up.

 

NASA’s expert on asteroid orbits, Dr Steve Chesley, raced to verify the data. 

 

The first thing I saw was a 1.000, a 100% probability of impact in less than a day’s time. I’d never seen anything like this outside of simulations and software testing.