“NASA Issues Warning as Three Asteroids Fly Past Earth”

This week, three notably large asteroids will fly past Earth, but the closest one will still be at a distance of 3.5 million kilometers from Earth, about 10 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, so they pose no threat to us.

This week, three notably large asteroids will fly past Earth, but the closest one will still be at a distance of 3.5 million kilometers from Earth, about 10 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, so they pose no threat to us.

According to NASA, on February 27th, the first object named 2012 DK31 flew by Earth at a distance of approximately 4.8 million kilometers.

This asteroid has an estimated width of 137 meters, equal to the height of a 40-story skyscraper, and its orbit around the Sun intersects Earth’s orbit every few years.

Although this “extraterrestrial skyscraper” doesn’t pose a threat to Earth, NASA classifies it as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), meaning it is large enough and has a close enough orbit to Earth to potentially cause significant damage if its orbit changes and a collision occurs.

Any asteroid wider than 137 meters and within a range of 7.5 million kilometers around Earth is classified as a PHA. NASA has mapped the trajectory of 2012 DK31 for the next 200 years and predicts no collision events.

On February 28th, a second PHA with a diameter of approximately 137 meters also approached our planet, at a distance of only 3.5 million kilometers. It is named 2006 BE55 and comes close to Earth every 4-5 years.

Finally, on March 3rd, an object with a diameter of about 76 meters will pass by Earth at a distance of 5.3 million kilometers. However, the size of this asteroid, named 2021 QW, is not large enough to be classified as a PHA, although it poses a threat to Earth every few years.

Scientists pay special attention to PHAs because even small changes in an asteroid’s trajectory, such as colliding with another asteroid or gravitational influences, can cause them to collide directly with Earth.

That is the driving force behind NASA’s recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

The mission didn’t completely destroy its target, but it demonstrated that direct rocket attacks have the potential to significantly alter the orbit parameters of an asteroid.

DART is a NASA space mission aimed at testing methods to protect the planet from near-Earth object impacts.

The spacecraft intentionally collides with the Didymos binary asteroid to test whether the kinetic energy from a spacecraft impact can successfully deflect an asteroid when it collides with Earth.

Hits: 11