Asteroid to Pass Near Earth

NASA is tracking a “potentially hazardous” asteroid that will pass near the Earth on March 4, 2022. The large rock is larger than Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper at 830 meters tall. The closest the asteroid is supposed to come to the Earth is 4.9 million kilometers. This is well outside the moon’s orbit, which is 385,000 kilometers.

Including the space rock, there are approximately 25 objects that will pass near Earth between today and March 4, according to information collected from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. Many of these other space objects will pass much closer to Earth; however, the asteroid is the largest.

The space rock has a diameter of 560 and 1,300 meters. On January 18, an asteroid 1,000 meters in diameter came within two million kilometers of the Earth.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory considers any space object at least 150 meters in diameter and passing within 7.5 kilometers of Earth potentially hazardous. For example, if a 100-meter diameter asteroid were to collide with Earth, the impact would cause an explosive force 10 times that of the volcanic eruption in Tonga on January 14.

On January 31, NASA announced it upgraded it’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). It consists of a host of four telescopes used by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office to track potentially dangerous asteroids.

In 2017, ATLAS began operations with two telescopes in Hawaii. In addition, there are two more telescopes: one in South Africa and one in Chile, allowing it to span the entire sky 24 hours a day. The alert system sends out a warning days ahead of time for space rocks that are 20 meters in diameter that will come near Earth and weeks ahead of time for asteroids that are 100 meters large. ATLAS has tracked more than 700 space rocks that have come near Earth.

The current rock of concern is not a recent discovery. MIT’s Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) detected the rock in 2001. Its journey has been well-tracked through the Solar System. Its closest approach will be within around 3.6 million kilometers of Earth on March 6, 2148.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains a website that reports the next five near-Earth asteroid approaches, the date each space rock will pass near Earth, how close it will pass by, and its size, along with a terrestrial comparison. For example, tomorrow, a space rock will pass by 2.5 million kilometers from the planet. The asteroid is 40 million kilometers in diameter.

Written by Jeanette Vietti

Sources:

Independent: Large, potentially hazardous asteroid to pass near Earth in early March
Singularity Hub: Do Look Up: NASA’s Asteroid Tracker Now Searches the Entire Sky Every 24 Hours by: Vanessa Bates Ramirez
African News: ATLAS Telescope has Begun Operations in South Africa by; Joshua Faleti

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