ANTARIKSA — A potentially dangerous asteroid the size of the Jakarta International Studium (JIS) football stadium will approach Earth today, Friday, February 2 2024. It will reach its closest point to our planet after more than 100 years of its journey around the Solar system.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the large asteroid, named 2008 OS7, measures approximately 271 meters. As it passes Earth, it will be traveling at about 41,000 mph (66,000 km/h).
To compare this space rock with other asteroids, it is about half the size of the asteroid Bennu, which NASA sampled last year. OS7 is also at least 70 times smaller than the Vredefort meteor, the largest space rock ever to hit Earth and wipe out the dinosaurs.
Due to its size and proximity to Earth, the asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous. However, JPL predicts OS7’s distance will not be enough to impact our planet. It will pass Earth at a distance of about 2.85 million kilometers. For context, that distance is seven times farther than the distance the moon orbits Earth.
Also read: Near-Earth asteroid detected 3 hours before exploding in the city of Berlin
However, if the space rock really fell to Earth, it would be able to wipe out large cities, such as New York and Jakarta. However, this time 0S7 will glide past Earth safely at 13.00 Eastern Time (ET) or 01.00 WIB, Saturday, February 3 2024.
The Virtual Telescope Project will livestream the asteroid’s pass so anyone can see it for themselves. Open here at 01.00 WIB: Asteroid OS7 Crosses Earth.
NASA has identified around 25,000 potentially dangerous asteroids. One of these deadly asteroids is estimated to hit Earth every 20,000 years.
OS7 2008 has a very elliptical orbit, meaning it doesn’t orbit evenly around the sun. Because of this, its distance to Earth varies greatly every time the space rock approaches our planet.
Also read: Earth’s condition immediately after the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit
For example, when OS7 approached Earth shortly after its discovery in 2008, it was about 90 million km away, or 30 times farther than it is today. Scientists have only twice directly observed asteroids flying past Earth.
Several other asteroids have approached or directly hit Earth in recent weeks. On January 21, a small asteroid was discovered by astronomers about 3 hours before it exploded in the atmosphere above Berlin, Germany. Furthermore, on January 27, 2024, an asteroid the size of an airplane passed Earth at a distance of 354,000 km. Source: Live Science
2024-02-02 03:53:00
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