As the week begins with a wave of asteroid activity, with four space rocks set to fire beyond Earth on Tuesday, two Indian teenagers have discovered another space rock due to crossings with our planet.
For starters, the 2020 OO1 asteroid the size of a small house will buzz at a distance of 669,000 km on July 27.
Then on Tuesday, we will witness a whopping four flybys in one day, starting with the relatively safe and short-lived stays of 2020NZ and 2020 OE2, 28m and 12m in diameter respectively, which will fly through our cosmic courtyard at a safe distance 3.1 million km and 1.7 million km.
Next, the real fun begins with the car-sized OY4 2020 (2.9m), ready to jump over a distance of just 41,500km. It will be followed by the OR4 2020 the size of an airplane (26 m), which will pass us 10 times that distance, turning beyond Earth at 457,000 km.
Both can be considered too close for comfort, since the distance from Earth to the Moon is only 384,400 km. However, neither represents a real threat, as they are unlikely to attack us and even if they did, they would be no match for our planet’s atmosphere.
The brief barrage of space rocks is enough reason to make suspicious stargazers nervous, especially after two 14-year-old girls in India, Vaidehi Vekariya and Radhika Lakhani, discovered the asteroid HLV2514, which will also one day run into the earth.
Teen star watchers saw the space rock during the All-India Asteroid Search Campaign (AIASC), part of the IASC, an outreach program run by NASA.
“It is, in fact, a near-Earth object (NEO)” IASC Director Patrick Miller confirmed, adding that it will evolve into an asteroid that crosses Earth at some undetermined time in the future.
At least for the time being, it appears that our planetary defenses are operating optimally by detecting the Chinese exit probe Tianwen-1 en route to Mars shortly after beginning its seven-month journey to the Red Planet as it scans the sky for asteroids. wayward.
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However, the surreptitious click will come as a bit of a relief, as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Paolo Nespoli, who was a mission specialist aboard space shuttle Discovery in 2007, warned that there are more than a million asteroids that they could hit Earth.
Between small and large, there are more than 1 million asteroids that could hit Earth. Right now, we are ignoring the probability that a massive one will suddenly appear. Time to act: # AsteroidDay Here’s one from mission 53, 2017. pic.twitter.com/qU5BtshqoE
– Paolo Nespoli (@astro_paolo) June 30, 2020
Formerly the agency’s oldest active astronaut before his retirement in 2018 at the age of 61, Nespoli posted a video of asteroid 163348 (2002 NN4), which passed 3.2 million miles on Earth, with a rather ominous legend for commemorate World Asteroid Day on June 30.
“Between small and large, there are more than a million asteroids that could hit Earth” he said. “Right now, we are ignoring the probability that a massive one will suddenly appear. Time to act: #AsteroidDay “.
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