You may have read this week about “the size of the world’s largest building causing damage to the Earth at speeds in excess of 56,000 miles.” Some news sites also “confirm NASA.” Most of these things are technically correct, but the most important point remains.
Asteroid 153201 (2000 WO107) will lose Earth by about 2.7 million miles on Sunday. Observations of the asteroid also put its size somewhere between the four football fields. That huge change makes it difficult to remove the size of relatively small objects.
What makes me scratch my head is that so much attention is being paid to this special near meaning ject budget (NEO). The trio of NEOs who will approach near Earth (again safely) on Thanksgiving Day is even more interesting. This includes the Asteroid 2018 RQ4, which will be 10 times closer than Sunday.
Planet defense
In 2005, Congress assigned NASA the goal of finding 90% of Earth’s closest asteroids that are about 460 feet (140 meters) or larger in size. The space agency responded by calling the NASA Center for Neer Earth ject budget studies, which keeps track of these and other NGOs.
The next time you see a claim about an asteroid heading towards Earth, you can see the data for you from the latest information from the center on nearby approaches.
The data there show a close approach (CA) of about 19 lunar distances (LD) in the next 60 days. Any NEO with more than one number in the “CA distance minimum LD” column has no chance of hitting the moon, less than Earth.
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