Sunday, March 12, 2023 | 08:36 WIB
By : Faisal Maliki Baskoro / FMB
This image taken on November 13, 2019 shows the asteroid Ryugu in outer space.
Jakarta, Beritasatu.com – Experts at NASA and ESA revealed that an asteroid with a diameter of almost 50 meters, has the potential to hit Earth on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2046. The space rock that was just discovered last February was named 2023 DW.
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) assess the chance that the asteroid will hit Earth as “very small” or about 1 in 625 (0.16%) so you don’t need to panic.
The asteroid has a rating of 1 on the Torino scale used to rate space objects, far from the highest score on a scale of 0-10. The asteroid must reach level 3 to have a 1% chance of local damage, and be away from impact threatening human civilization at level 10.
We’ve been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/SaLC0AUSdP
— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) March 7, 2023
For comparison, an asteroid of similar size caused the Tunguska event in 1908. The asteroid exploded before it hit the ground but flattened about 80 million trees across an area of 2,150 square kilometers. It was an area nearly as large as Cape Town in South Africa, although the area affected at the time was largely unpopulated.
However, comparisons are very difficult to make. The impact of a potential collision will depend on factors such as the asteroid’s velocity, the angle of impact, and the composition of the asteroid itself, all of which are unknown at this time.
What we do know is that 2023 DW is about 0.14 astronomical units (AU) from Earth today, the equivalent of about 21 million kilometers or 13 million miles. The asteroid is traveling at 24.63 km/sec (which is equivalent to 55,095 miles per hour).
The asteroid was discovered on February 26 and takes 271 days to circle the Sun. You can see the movement in detail real-time via NASA’s pretty impressive Eyes On Asteroid tracker site.
Currently, the tracker shows that 2023 DW will miss Earth by about 1.8 million kilometers but this estimate will of course be corrected in the next few years.
“Often when a new object is first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce uncertainty and adequately predict its orbit for years into the future,” NASA said as quoted by ScienceAlert.com. “Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in.
It is the job of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office to decide whether and when action needs to be taken, for example launching the recently successful test-testing Double Asteroid Diversion (DART) space probe.
The deadliest asteroid hit of all time was the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs millions of years ago. The object is estimated to be roughly 200 times larger than 2023 DW.
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