The largest asteroid to pass Earth in 2022 will shrink to some 4,024 million kilometers away from us, this Friday, May 27, 2022 at 4:26 p.m. (Paris time). Without presenting any risk of collision, it will allow astronomers to study this celestial object more closely.
Potentially dangerous
7335 (1989 JA) is a large block of rock about 1.8 km in diameter, more or less the size of Everest, which would cause great damage if it hit our planet. However, there is no risk of this happening since it will be at its closest at more than 10.5 times the Earth-Moon distance. It is nevertheless classified as “potentially dangerous” by NASA, like all the large stars that frequent our neighborhood. 1989 JA is classified as an Apollo asteroid: its orbit is larger than that of the Earth but with an eccentricity that allows it to cross the orbit of our planet. It takes 862 days to go around the Sun and rotates around every 12 hours. It will pass through our vicinity again in 2055 and 2081 during this century, but each time it will be even further away, more than 10 million kilometers from Earth.
The star was discovered by Eleanor Francis Helin at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, on May 1, 1989. It has since been observed several times, but any close pass provides an opportunity to learn more about it. these blocks of rocks that have been evolving in the solar system since its creation.
To follow on the internet
Several instruments will therefore be aimed at the asteroid this afternoon and it will be bright enough to be visible from small telescopes, mainly placed in the southern hemisphere. But the inhabitants of the North will also be able to follow it thanks to the projects the Virtual Telescope Project et @Telescope Live who will broadcast from 3 p.m. a program on YouTube with images of the intruder taken from Australia and Chile.
The Earth regularly crosses large asteroids called “near-Earth” asteroids, the impact of which could cause significant damage anywhere on its surface with catastrophic consequences. The dinosaurs were victims of this and before them no doubt other species disappeared because of such an event. Faced with this threat, humanity is very helpless. Still, astronomers listed the most dangerous pebbles with a diameter of more than a kilometer, which are carefully monitored, and they established that in the near future the Earth should not be hit by biggest of them. Impossible to guess what will happen in hundreds or thousands of years. This is why the various space agencies are preparing plans to deal with the risk of collision. The most advanced currently is the DART mission which aims to deflect the trajectory of an asteroid by hitting it. The shock is scheduled for September 2022 on the asteroid Dimorphos.
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