A "potentially hazardous" asteroid will make close pass by Earth

Admin Posts : 134 Join date : 2020-10-20 Age : 64

A "potentially hazardous" asteroid more than twice the size of the Empire State Building will make close pass by Earth

A "potentially hazardous" asteroid will make close pass by Earth Screen-shot-2022-01-12-at-7-44-03-am

Quote :: An asteroid that is wider than the tallest building in the world is set to make one of its closest encounters with Earth. NASA projects that the asteroid, named 7482 (1994 PC1), will fly by on Tuesday.

The asteroid is estimated to measure at roughly 1 kilometer, or more than 3,280 feet, across — a size that is more than twice the height of New York's Empire State Building, which is 1,454 feet from base to antenna, and hundreds of feet more than Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which is 2,716.5 feet tall.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believes that the space body could come within 1,231,184 miles of Earth. This would be the closest the asteroid has come to Earth since January 17, 1933, when NASA projected it came within less than 700,000 miles of the planet.

It's also anticipated that the asteroid will pass by Earth again in July this year, though at a far greater distance, NASA said. The next time it is anticipated to fly by Earth at such a close distance is not until January 18, 2105, when it is projected to come within 1,445,804 miles.

[...]

And in case there is an asteroid emergency in the future resembling that of Netflix's "Don't Look Up," NASA is already working on a solution. In November, the agency launched a probe that will crash head-on into a small asteroid next fall as part of a test to see if it's possible to push a future asteroid off course if it appears as though it's going to have a catastrophic collision with the planet.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, will collide with a 525-foot-wide body called Dimorphos at 15,000 miles per hour.

» Make Us Laugh!