A small asteroid barely lost Earth a few hours after discovering a rock the size of a car flying through space.
The asteroid, named RS2 2021, reached less than 9,532 miles from Earth’s surface on Tuesday. According to EarthSky, the nearby call was slightly farther than the diameter of the Earth, 7,917.5 miles.
RS2 was first observed by researchers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona on September 7, as it landed on Earth at 39,366 miles per hour.
If the asteroid had approached, it would have disintegrated mainly while burning in the atmosphere and posed no real threat to the planet.
It is the closest overflight of the year and the 21st closest, as it shares the site with the 2021 CZ3 that passed over us on February 9, 2021.
According to The Watchers website, RS2 is the 81st known asteroid to fly at a lunar distance [239,228.3 miles] of the Earth since early 2021.
In the event that an asteroid one day threatens the existence of Earth, NASA has developed a contingency plan to launch a spacecraft into the rock.
“Until now, we didn’t have too many options to do what we could do if we found something coming,” Johns Hopkins planetary astronomer Andy Rivkin told the Vice Asteroid Redirection (DAR) mission in April. Test) (DART) from NASA. “DART is the first test of how we can deflect something without having to resort to a nuclear package, or sitting in our basements, waiting for it and crossing our fingers.”