An asteroid the size of a house will fly past Earth today.
Today, an asteroid the size of a house will come close to Earth, and two smaller space objects will fly behind it. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has warned that one of these asteroids will come within 309,000 km of Earth, which is 77,000 km closer to the Moon.
About this writing Daily Mail.
The fact that medium-sized space rocks will pass so close to our planet provides a unique research opportunity for scientists working to create a defense system to prevent collisions between Earth and future asteroids.
The smallest asteroid flies closest to Earth, measuring just over 4 meters in diameter. The second asteroid, about the size of a bus, approaches our planet at a distance of 3 million km, and the third one, the largest, the size of a house, at a distance of 4.5 million km.
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NASA confirmed that although the asteroids will pass very close to Earth, there is no danger of hitting them.
As astronomers gain experience observing asteroids, the accuracy of their long-term predictions about the paths of space objects increases dramatically. This means that by detecting an asteroid hurtling towards Earth, researchers will be able to determine whether there is a risk of an impact and prevent a disaster like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Although none of the asteroids approaching the Earth are a serious threat, NASA is preparing for the worst case scenario. In 2016, the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) was created to better detect, track and understand comets and asteroids that could pose a risk of collision with Earth.
The group has designed the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) space telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2027. It will detect and identify potentially dangerous asteroids that are more less than 50 million km from Earth’s orbit.
Let us remember that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurshe was not the only one. Researchers were able to find this out by creating a computer model of the effects of an asteroid impact.
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