On August 16, a space rock hit the size of a car past Earth at a distance too close for comfort – about 1,830 miles. What’s even more enchanting is that NASA never saw it after it happened.
A report quoted by Business Insider, it was the closest ever recorded, according to asteroid trackers and a catalog compiled by Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
The report said that the space rock, because of its size, would probably not pose a danger to humans on the ground if it hit our planet. However, it noted that “the close call is not worrying, because astronomers had no idea that the asteroid existed until after it was over.”
“The asteroid approached unknown from the direction of the sun,” Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider. “We did not see it coming.”
The space rock was first discovered, about six hours after it flew through Earth, by the Palomar Observatory in California.
The record-breaking nature of the event was confirmed by Chodas: “Yesterday’s correct approach is the closest to record, if you shorten a few known asteroids that actually affected our planet,” the cited report said.
According to the report, NASA is aware of only a fraction of near-Earth objects (NEOs) like these, because many do not cross the line of sight of a telescope, and in recent years several potentially dangerous asteroids have hit scientists. snuck. If the evil slipped through the holes in our NEO surveillance systems, it could kill tens of thousands of people, the report found.
This recent near-Earth asteroid, initially called ZTF0DxQ, is now formally known to astronomers as 2020 QG. The Business Insider report said it first learned about it from the maker of the website orbitsimulator.com, Tony Dunn.
Dunn tweeted on Monday: “Newly discovered asteroid ZTF0DxQ went through less than 1/4 Earth diameter yesterday, making it the closest known flyby that did not hit our planet,” the report quoted.
Business Insider reported that “early observations suggest that space rock flew over the Southern Hemisphere just after 4 a.m. Universal Time (midnight ET) on Sunday.” However, the report said the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center calculated a slightly different orbit, suggesting that the asteroid flew across the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles east of Australia.
Not dangerous, but it’s unnerving.
According to the report, QG 2020 was not too dangerous, as far as space rocks are concerned.
“Telescopic observations suggest the object is between 6 meters (2 meters) and 18 feet (5.5 meters) wide – somewhere between the size of a small car and a pick-up truck with an extended cab,” the report said. According to the “Impact Earth” simulator of Purdue University and Imperial College London, even if it was at the largest end of that spectrum and made of dense iron, because most asteroids are rocky, only small pieces of such asteroids have reached ground, the cited Business Insider report.
Such an asteroid would have exploded in the atmosphere.
According to the report, an asteroid like this, which exploded in the atmosphere, would have created a brilliant fireball. The unlocked airburst would have been equivalent to detonating a few tens of thousands of kilotons of TNT, or about the same as one of the atomic bombs that the US dropped on Japan in 1945. But to people on the ground, however, the airburst, which would have happened 2 or 3 miles above the ground, would not sound louder than heavy traffic, the report said.
It does not cost an enormous amount of rock to create a major problem.
However, the report noted that it does not cost a large space rock to create a major problem. In February 2013, a roughly 66-foot-wide asteroid exploded without warning over Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing a superbolide event that left an airburst equal to 500 kilotons of TNT – about 30 Hiroshima nuclear bombs’ worth energy, the report said. The blast, which started about 12 miles above the ground, triggered an explosion wave, shattered windows in six Russian cities and injured about 1,500 people.
What is considered a “potentially dangerous” NEO?
“Potentially dangerous” NEOs are defined as space objects that come within 0.05 astronomical units and measure more than 460 feet in diameter, according to NASA.
NASA is actively scanning the skies for such threats, which Congress has required it to do since 2005. However, the report said that “the agency is mandated to detect only 90% of ‘urban killer’ spacecraft larger than 140 meters.) In diameter. ”
In May 2019, NASA said it had found less than half of the estimated 25,000 objects of that size or larger, the quote reports.
Objects coming from the direction of the sun are notoriously difficult to spot in the meantime – like 2020 QG – the report said.
“There is not much that can be done to detect incoming asteroids from the direction of the sun downwards, because asteroids are only detected with optical telescopes (like ZTF), and we can only look for them in the night sky. , “said Chodas. “The idea is that we discover them on one of their previous passages through our planet, and then make predictions about years and decades in advance to see if they have any possibility of influence,” the Chodas report cited.
NASA has a plan.
According to the Business Insider report, NASA has a plan to address these holes in its asteroid-hunting program, and is in the early stages of developing a space telescope capable of detecting asteroids and comets coming from the coming towards the sun. Nearly $ 36 million has been allocated to NASA’s 2020 budget for that telescope, called the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission. It could start in early 2025, if funding continues.
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