A “potentially dangerous” asteroid the size of a blue whale is scheduled to fly by Earth on Friday (12 August). according to NASA (opens in new tab).
That asteroiddubbed 2015 FF, has an estimated diameter of between 42 and 92 feet (13 and 28 meters), or about the body length of an adult blue whale (Balaenoptera Musculus) and will hurtle past Earth at 20,512 mph (33,012 km/h).
At its closest approach, the asteroid, traveling at about 27 times the speed of sound, will come in at about 2.67 million miles (4.3 million kilometers). Earthjust over eight times the average distance between Earth and the moon. By cosmic standards, this is a tiny margin.
Related: Why do asteroids and comets have such strange shapes?
NASA labels any space object that approaches within 120 million miles (193 million km) of Earth as a “near-Earth object,” and any fast-moving object within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) is labeled as a classified as “Potentially Dangerous”. Once the objects are tagged, astronomers monitor them closely, looking for deviations from their predicted orbits – such as B. an unexpected ricochet from another asteroid – which could put them on a devastating collision course with Earth.
NASA knows the position and orbits of about 28,000 asteroids, which it maps using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) – an array of four telescopes capable of a full scan of the entire night sky every 24 hours . Since ATLAS went online in 2017, it has discovered more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets. Two of the asteroids discovered by ATLAS, 2019 MO and 2018 LA, actually hit Earth, the former exploding off the south coast of Puerto Rico and the latter making landfall near the Botswana-South Africa border. Fortunately, these asteroids were small and did no harm.
NASA has estimated the trajectories of all near-Earth objects well beyond the end of the century, and the good news is that Earth faces no known danger from an apocalyptic asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years. according to NASA.
But that doesn’t mean space observers think they should stop looking. Although the majority of near-Earth objects may not spell the end of civilization, like the cataclysmic comet that appears in the 2021 satirical disaster film Don’t Look Up, there are still many devastating asteroid impacts in recent history that justify the sequel Alertness.
In March 2021, a bowling ball-sized meteor exploded over Vermont with the force of 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of TNT. Live Science previously reported. However, these fireworks have nothing to do with the most explosive meteor event in recent memory, which occurred in 2013 near the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk. When the Chelyabinsk meteor hit the atmosphere, it created an explosion equivalent to about 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT. or 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb. Fireballs rained down over the city and its environs, damaging buildings, shattering windows and injuring approximately 1,200 people.
Should astronomers ever spy on an asteroid heading straight for our planet, space agencies around the world are already working on ways to deflect the object. On November 24, 2021, NASA launched a spacecraft as part of its DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission to redirect the harmless asteroid Dimorphos ram it off course in the fall of 2022, Live Science previously reported. China is also in the early stages of planning an asteroid diversion mission. By smashing 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, the country hopes to distract the space rock from a potentially catastrophic effects on Earth.
Originally published on Live Science.
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