471-Botswana Bound

A small space rock with a diameter less than the height of an NBA basketball player had just crossed the orbit of our Moon on a collision course with Earth when it was spotted streaking through the constellation of Scorpius by my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Richard Kowalski. 8 hours and 37 minutes after Richard's discovery observations, the space rock now known as 2018 LA was seen by security cameras to explode over Botswana in southern Africa just as NASA's scout system predicted.