A newly discovered “potentially dangerous” asteroid nearly the size of the world’s tallest skyscraper is set to crash past Earth in time for Halloween, according to NASA.
That asteroid, dubbed 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 meters) – just under the height of Dubai’s 2,716 feet (828 m) Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. According to NASA, it will hurtle past our planet at about 52,500 mph (84,500 km/h), or about 68 times the speed of sound (opens in new tab).
At its closest approach on November 1, the asteroid will come within about 1.43 million miles (2.3 million kilometers). Eartharound six times the average distance between Earth and the moon. By cosmic standards, this is a very narrow range.
Related: Why do asteroids and comets have such strange shapes? (opens in new tab)
NASA labels any space object that is within 120 million miles (193 million km) of Earth as a “near Earth object” and classifies any large body within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet as “potentially dangerous”. Once these potential threats are marked, they are closely watched by astronomers, who use radar to scan them for signs of deviations from their predicted trajectories that could put them on a devastating collision course with Earth.
No danger, but the newly discovered asteroid 2022 RM4 will travel less than 6 lunar distances on November 1st. Possibly as wide as 740 meters, it will brighten to mag 14.3, well within reach of backyard telescopes. @unistellar That’s very close for an asteroid this size. #2022RM4 pic.twitter.com/Z8khblg3GqOctober 5, 2022
NASA is tracking the locations and orbits of about 28,000 asteroids and locating them with the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) – an array of four telescopes capable of performing 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 beyond the end of the century. 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 (opens in new tab).
Related: 8 ways to stop an asteroid: nukes, paint and Bruce Willis
But that doesn’t mean astronomers think they should stop looking. Although the majority of near-Earth objects may not spell the end of civilization, like the planet-destroying comet in the 2021 satirical disaster film Don’t Look Up, there are many devastating asteroid impacts in recent history that warrant continued vigilance.
For example, in March 2021, a meteor the size of a bowling ball exploded over Vermont (opens in new tab) with the power of 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of TNT. In 2013, a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere over the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk produced an explosion equivalent to approximately 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, or 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb (opens in new tab). During the 2013 blast, fireballs rained down over the city and surrounding areas, damaging buildings, shattering windows and injuring approximately 1,500 people.
Should astronomers ever spy on a dangerous asteroid in our path, space agencies around the world are already working on ways to deflect it. On Sep 26, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft redirected the harmless asteroid Dimorphos by knocking it off course (opens in new tab)changing the asteroid’s orbit by 32 minutes in the first test of Earth’s planetary defense system.
China has also proposed (opens in new tab) it is in the early planning stages of an asteroid rerouting mission. By launching 23 Long March 5 rockets at asteroid Bennu, which is expected to orbit within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of Earth’s orbit between the years 2175 and 2199, the country hopes to destroy the space rock of a potentially catastrophic impact deflect our planet.
Originally published on Live Science.
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