Because the Earth has made up its mind for at least 5 asteroid flybys, NASA is reporting a rocky start to the week. It follows closely behind another asteroid that is flying between Earth and the Moon without anyone noticing.
Four of the five asteroid-like rocks that have been buzzing the Earth this week have been found only in Would possibly perhaps well well also, raising concerns about colourful how ready our planetary defences are. If we caught them, we’d have to shoot them out of the sky or at the very least deflect them, our only two options for averting an asteroid apocalypse right now.
Fortunately, the asteroids, which range in size from 46 to 180 feet in diameter, will pass us by with a margin of error of between 869,000 and 4.1 million miles, so there should be no immediate concern about an impending fiery loss of life raining down from the sky to bear up the wildfires, pandemics, economic crises, and social and civil unrest that have plagued the Earth to this level in 2020.
However, a visitor that came to our yard and left before anyone noticed – asteroid 2020 LD, which measures 400 feet/122 metres in diameter – is causing more alarm than this week’s celestial traffic.
2020 LD passed between the Earth and the Moon, becoming the first living rock to do so since 2011, yet no one noticed until it was long past; it passed us on June 5, but wasn’t discovered until June 7.
Astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Final Alert Device (ATLAS) computed its trajectory after the fact, having travelled 80 percent of the distance between the Earth and the Moon, or around 190,000 miles or 300,000 kilometres.
At this level, ATLAS has discovered 46 potentially hazardous “doubtlessly perilous asteroids” (PHAs) with diameters greater than 500 feet (140 metres). While the asteroid 2020 LD wasn’t a planet-killer, it was a lot bigger than the Chelyabinsk asteroid that wrecked havoc on Siberia in 2013.
According to current predictions by astrophysicists, an asteroid with a diameter of 1,640ft (500m) or more will approach the Earth once every 130,000 years or more. Asteroid 99942 Apophis will graze our geostationary satellites in orbit on April 13, 2029, at some point on the earth.
With a diameter of 1,100 feet (340 metres), Apophis isn’t quite a ‘planet killer,’ but it will undoubtedly bring the closest capacity by far the greatest known asteroids expected to cross paths with the Earth in the near future.
Next up is Bennu, which has a diameter of 1,610 feet (490 metres) and has a small chance of colliding with Earth between 2175 and 2199. While it may seem like a long time from now for us on Earth, the clock is ticking on organising and assembling our planetary defences in some practical sense.
The first planned ‘drill’ will take place in 2026, when NASA attempts to divert the asteroid Psyche using a so-called ‘kinetic impactor.’ That is, assuming we make it through 2020 unscathed.
