“Asteroid 2023 CL3 Approaching Earth: NASA’s Warning and Defense Methods”

CNN Indonesia

Thursday, 11 May 2023 12:50 WIB

Jakarta, CNNIndonesia —

Asteroid giant 2023 CL3 will cross at the end of May 2023. How close to Earth?

Quoted from The Sun, this celestial body is estimated to have a width of up to 656 feet or 199.949 meters. That size is about 1.5 times that of the National Monument (Monas), Jakarta, which has a height of 132 meters.

The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is said to have included this asteroid in the list of celestial bodies approaching Earth or Earth Close Approaches.

NASA assesses that an asteroid of this size has the risk of causing damage to Earth if it collides. The list shows Asteroid 2023 CL3, which is twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.

Liberty in New York, United States which has a height of 305 feet or about 93 meters. This means that the asteroid is roughly twice the size of Liberty.

Asteroid 2023 CL3 is expected to pass Earth on May 24 at a distance of less than 4.5 million miles or about 7.2 kilometers.

That distance sounded far away, but in the realm of outer space, it wasn’t that great of a distance.

Quoted from the site Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASAthere are also two fairly large asteroids that will approach in the near future.

First, 2023 HT4 with a width of 76 meters or the size of a building, which is expected to approach Earth, May 12, at a distance of 6.07 million km.

Second, the asteroid 2023 JG with a width of 49 meters or the size of a commercial airplane, approached Earth at a distance of 7.1 million km, May 13.

Some experts fear that Earth is not yet ready to defend itself from a potentially lethal asteroid.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once expressed his concern by tweeting, “a boulder will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense.“

NASA itself is looking for several defense methods to deal with collisions between Asteroids and Earth. That’s why Nasa launched its Double Asteroid Diversion Test mission last year.

This experiment proves that NASA is able to warn the orbit of an asteroid called Dimorphos.

(can/arh)