In the early hours of Thursday, an asteroid larger than two football fields will pass by. The asteroid is going to pass near us. There is a time and a place for it.
The asteroid was discovered by NASA on July 26th. The space rock is larger than an American football field and is between 557 and 1,246 feet in width. Live Science previously reported that the asteroid is an Apollo-class asteroid and that it crosses the path of Earth's moon. About 15,000 such asteroids are known by the astronomer.
More energy would be released from an asteroid than from bombs. According to NASA, this one will miss Earth by a lot.
More than 13 times the average distance between Earth and the moon is predicted to be crossed by a asteroid in the year 22. The average distance between Earth and the moon is 23%, but this is more than that.
NASA monitors tens of thousands of objects like this one and has estimated the trajectory of all of them past the end of the century NASA said that Earth is in no danger of being hit by an asteroid for at least the next 100 years.
A collision with another asteroid or the pull of a planet could change the trajectory of a large asteroid and put it on a potentially catastrophic path with Earth.
Space agencies are very serious about planetary defense. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test is an asteroid-deflecting mission that will take place in the fall of 2022. The collision won't destroy the asteroid, but it may change the space rock's path. Should a future space rock pose an imminent danger to our planet, the mission will help test the viability of asteroids.
It was originally published on Live Science
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