A house-sized asteroid safely handed Earth on Friday morning inside roughly 62% of the typical lunar distance, in accordance to astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project.
The near-Earth asteroid 2023 EY, found by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on March 13, got here inside 2,39,800 kilometres of Earth’s floor. (ALSO READ: Stunning video: Asteroid lights up evening sky above English channel)
ATLAS is the primary telescope able to surveying the complete sky as soon as each 24 hours serving to astronomers with extra correct classification and identification of near-Earth objects equivalent to asteroids.
Nasa’s Asteroid Watch dashboard shows asteroid and comet approaches to Earth that might be fairly shut.
Which asteroid is harmful?
The common distance between Earth and the moon is about 3,85,000 km and Nasa tracks these asteroids that approaches Earth inside 19.5 instances distance to the moon. According to the US area company, an object bigger than about 150 meters that may strategy the Earth to inside this distance is termed a probably hazardous object.
Although asteroids continuously come dangerously near Earth, it has been over 65 million years since a disastrous collision with our planet, which is assumed to have resulted within the extinction of many species, together with dinosaurs.
Nasa’s DART mission as defend in opposition to asteroid!
However, Nasa has already carried out the world’s first planetary defence take a look at (DART) in opposition to occasion of any asteroid collision on Earth. Nonetheless, Nasa admits that the plan is only precautionary, as no such asteroid has a big probability of placing Earth within the subsequent 100 years.
Source web site: www.hindustantimes.com
