Asteroid with a diameter of 1.8 km will slide and lead to Earth, Friday (27/5). The space object will not hit Earth, but is considered dangerous.
The asteroid, known as 7335 (1989 JA), will be around 2.5 million miles or 4 million kilometers from Earth. This distance is almost 10 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon.
NASA assesses the asteroid as potentially dangerous Earth when its orbit changes. This asteroid is one of at least 29,000 near -Earth objects (NEOs) that NASA tracks each year.
Collect Live Science, asteroid 7335 is larger than 99 percent of the NEOs NASA has observed.
Asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) also belongs to a class of asteroids called Apollo. Apollo is the name for an asteroid that orbits the Sun and periodically crosses Earth’s orbit.
The arrival of 7335 (1989 JA) this time will be the closest to Earth. This condition will only happen again in the next 200 years.
Biggest Asteroid
According to NASA, 7335 (1989 JA) is the largest asteroid to approach Earth this year. Asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) orbits the Sun every 2.35 years.
Scientists estimate the asteroid was moving at about 47,200 mph (76,000 km/h) or 20 times the speed of a bullet.
The space rock won’t fly close to Earth again until June 23, 2055. During that time, the asteroid will be about 70 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Earthsky reported, in 2013, a large asteroid called Chelyabinsk entered Earth’s atmosphere and shattered windows in six cities in Russia.
NASA is monitoring NEO closely, and recently launched a mission to test whether a potentially dangerous asteroid could someday be deflected off course to prevent a collision with Earth.
In November 2021, NASA launched a spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will collide head-on with the 525-foot-wide (160-meter) asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022.
The collision will not destroy the asteroid, but may slightly change its orbital path.
(lth/lth)
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