In the early hours of Thursday, a large asteroid passed by Earth. At 12:14 a.m., the asteroid was going to pass. 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 large margin.
How many threats are there? It is complex.
The asteroid was predicted to travel more than 13 times the distance between Earth and the moon. The average distance between Earth and the moon on July 7 was 23%, but this is much closer.
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 According to NASA, Earth is in no danger of a catastrophic asteroid impact for 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 slightly. 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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