According to NASA, an asteroid twice the size of the Empire State Building will pass by the Earth tonight, but it will not be close enough to create any difficulties.
The space rock, designated 418135 (2008 AG33), will approach the earth at a distance of nearly two million miles, roughly eight times that of the moon.
The asteroid will be traveling at 23,300 miles per hour, or approximately 30 times the speed of sound, when it approaches Earth’s orbit and reaches its closest point. The rock, which has a diameter of up to 2,560 feet and is possibly dangerous, is approaching Earth around 10:46 p.m. ET tonight.
While two million miles may seem like a large distance, it is quite close in cosmic proportions, falling well within the Earth’s orbit.
As a result, every asteroid that approaches this near to Earth is classified as potentially dangerous – a sort of Near-Earth Object that might endanger life on Earth.
Any item within 120 million miles of the earth is classified as a Near-Earth Object (NEO), and anything within 4.65 million miles is classified as “possibly dangerous.”
Astronomers and planetary defense experts keep a tight eye on these boulders because any slight change in their orbit might put them on a crash path with Earth.
Asteroid 418135 (2008 AG33) isn’t a newbie; it was found in January 2008 by astronomers at the Mt Lemmon SkyCenter in Arizona, and it last made a ‘near approach to the Earth in March 2015, performing a seven-year fly-by.
According to NASA, the next close flyby isn’t scheduled until May 2029, unless something happens to modify its orbit, which seems improbable.
The distinction between an asteroid, a meteorite, and other space rocks:
A huge piece of rock left over from collisions in the early solar system is known as an asteroid. The majority of them are found in the Main Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. A comet is a rocky body that is coated in ice, methane, and other gases. Their orbits carry them a long way. Even so, it’s still bigger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite, which erupted above Russia in 2013, sending a shock wave that traveled twice around the world.
The asteroid 2008 AG33 will not be the biggest to approach Earth in the next weeks; that honor will go to 467460 (2006 JF42), which was found in 2006 and is projected to be up to 2,820 feet in diameter. Even though it will be 3.5 million kilometers from Earth.
NASA, the European Space Agency, China, and others are developing planetary defense systems to prevent most asteroids from colliding with Earth if they are on a direct path.
DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a NASA space mission that aims to test a way of planetary defense against near-Earth objects by smashing an asteroid and seeing if the technology can be used to gently adjust the asteroid’s orbit. It will be released in September.
China has acknowledged that as part of its preparations for a planetary defense system, it intends to crash a spaceship onto an asteroid.
The mission’s final destination has yet to be determined, but Wu Yanhua stated that the CNSA intends to target a potentially dangerous asteroid – an object that has a tiny possibility of hitting our planet in the future.
Follow geeksultd.com for more information.
