CNN Indonesia
Monday, 13 March 2023 21:00 WIB
Illustration. An asteroid has the potential to hit Earth on Valentine’s Day in 2046. (NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Handout via REUTERS)
Jakarta, CNNIndonesia —
A asteroid chance of crashing Earth in 2046 to be precise on February 14th. Dangerous to humans?
The presence of the asteroid was detected by the US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on February 26. NASA gave the name 2023 DW for the asteroid that takes 271 days to go around the Sun.
The name ‘2023’ indicates the year the asteroid was discovered. Meanwhile, the letter “D” indicates the second week of February.
Quoted from Science Alert, NASA revealed, the chance of this asteroid hitting Earth is “very small” about 1 in 625 times the possibility. In addition, this 2023 DW asteroid is in the first order of the Torino scale.
Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in. Explore this asteroid and others: (2/2)
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) March 7, 2023
That means, the chance for this asteroid to cause local scale damage is relatively small. A level 3 asteroid is needed to have a 1 percent chance of causing that damage.
Also, a new asteroid will cause tremendous disaster if it is at level 10.
Currently, the asteroid 2023 DW is at a distance of 0.14 astronomical units (AU) from Earth which is equivalent to approximately 21 million km. Its speed reaches 24.63 km / sec.
Currently, the system is tracking asteroid 2023 DW missing Earth by about 1.8 million km. But experts will re-measure the asteroid’s speed in a few years from now.
“Often, when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce uncertainty and predict sufficiently their future orbits,” the official statement read. NASA.
“Orbit analysis will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data arrives,” he wrote again.
Previously an asteroid similar to 2023 DW had caused the Tunguska event in 1908. The event was a 12 megaton explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya area, Russia on June 30, 1908.
As a result of the explosion, about 80 million trees in an area of about 2,150 square km were destroyed. Eyewitnesses said that at least three people died as a result of the explosion.
However, that doesn’t mean the asteroid 2023 DW will cause a similar impact. This is because the effects of an asteroid collision depend on the speed, angle of impact, and composition of the asteroid itself.
(lth)
