A huge asteroid three times the size of a London bus will burn between Earth and the moon tomorrow at a distance of just 159,000 miles, NASA has revealed.
Named the 2021 GT3, the 108-foot-long space rock will fly over Earth on April 10, approaching the planet around 10:30 p.m.
NASA says the asteroid poses no direct threat to life on Earth, as it will be too far away at its closest point to collide with the planet.
The space rock, which will move between Earth and the Moon at 54,000 miles per hour, will be too weak to see it with anything except the larger professional telescopes.
Named the 2021 GT3, the 108-foot-long space rock will fly over Earth on April 10, making its closest approach to the planet at 10:30 p.m.
Named the 2021 GT3, the 108-foot-long space rock will fly over Earth on April 10, making its closest approach to the planet at 10:30 p.m.
It has an absolute magnification of 26, which will make it invisible to even larger garden telescopes, which usually see up to a fortnight of magnitude in a clear sky.
It will be 159,000 miles from Earth at its nearest point, for comparison, the Earth is approximately 238,900 miles from the Moon.
The object’s orbit carries the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, closer to the sun than Mercury and back to the asteroid belt.
During its journey around the sun, the space rock crosses the orbital path of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, making it a potential collision for all of them, although this orbit is the only planet. that will be close is the Earth.
The space rock was first detected on April 6 and orbits the sun every 650 days.
GT3 is classified as a Near Earth Object (NEO), which poses a potential risk to the Earth, but any object that is 1.3 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun is also a NEO.
Most NEOs pose no danger. It’s the small percentage of potentially dangerous asteroids that requires extra control, “NASA said in its Asteroid Watch article.
“These objects are defined as those that approach Earth less than half the Earth-Sun distance” and GT3 falls within the potentially dangerous cluster.
The rock is about the same length as three London routemaster buses or, according to the US space agency, about the size of an average house.
It is the second rock of similar dimensions to approach, with 2021 GT reaching 688,000 miles from Earth at 20:11 BST this evening, passing three times farther from Earth than the moon, according to NASA.
Tomorrow two more rocks will pass through Earth, both larger than GT3, but both will pass millions of miles from the planet.
GB4, a 236-foot asteroid mammoth, will pass three million kilometers from Earth at 01:00 BST, followed by GT3 at 22:30 and then GT1, a 131-foot-long space rock will pass 2.8 million miles from Earth at 23:16 BST.
GT3 is classified as a Near Earth (NEO) object, which poses a potential risk to the Earth, but any object that is 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun is also a NEO.
It will be a busy weekend for asteroids passing over Earth, although none will be closer to GT3 and most will be millions of miles away, NASA said.
Asteroids are rock fragments of the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, most orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.
Occasionally, the orbital paths of asteroids are influenced by the gravitational pull of the planets, which cause their paths to be altered.
When this happens, it can cause a potential collision orbit with Earth or other planets, including one that killed dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Astronomers are looking for asteroids longer than 450 feet because they can cause “catastrophic damage”
Researchers have discovered most asteroids about a kilometer in size, but are now looking for those that are about 140 m long, as they could cause catastrophic damage.
Although no one knows when the next big impact will occur, scientists have come under pressure to predict and intercept its arrival.
Impression of the artist portrayed
“Sooner or later we will have … a greater or lesser impact,” said Rolf Densing, who heads the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt
It may not happen in our lives, he said, but “the risk of the Earth being affected in a devastating event one day is very high.”
“At the moment, there is little we can do.”
Source: AFP