On April 29, an asteroid between 1.8 and 4 kilometers in diameter will approach Earth, but fortunately it is not expected to collide with our planet. If it did – which is not going to be the case – the asteroid is “large enough to cause global effects,” according to NASA.
The asteroid, christened 52768 (1998 OR2) , was first seen in 1998 and listed by Sentry as a “potentially dangerous object” because it passed close to Earth’s orbit. NASA’s Sentry System is “a highly automated collision monitoring system that continuously scans the most current asteroid catalog for possible future impacts with Earth in the next 100 years.” However, over the years, NASA removed this asteroid from the threat list because there is no danger of impact. It will pass at a distance of 6,289 km from the Earth , that is, more than 16 times the average distance from the Earth to the Moon and at a speed of about 30,000 kilometers per hour.
The flyby is expected to take place on Wednesday, April 29 at 4:56 a.m. ET , according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, which is tasked with tracking near-Earth objects that could collide with our planet. .
Why does it interest us, if it will pass so far from us?
In short, because it is an object of significant size. Assuming it is a stony asteroid that reflects sunlight on a regular basis, 1198 OR2 will not pass near us again until April 16, 2079, and even then it will be further away than the Moon, so it comes across as a good one. opportunity to study it.
“The discovery of the asteroid comes] just after the installation last month of new state-of-the-art hardware for data analysis and computing that accelerates our search for near-Earth objects. This shows that our efforts to find near-Earth objects are paying off, ”explained NEAT project director Steven Pravdo of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Although the threat of an asteroid collision is low at the moment, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has warned that there is a possibility of a deadly asteroid appearing in the near future. “This is not about Hollywood, it is not about the movies,” Bridenstine said. “Ultimately, it’s about protecting the only planet we know, right now, to support life.”
We might believe that we are in a safe place within our solar system, with Jupiter capturing many of the asteroids that are passing by, but the gas giant will not be able to catch all of them and, in fact, we have some examples in Earth’s history. Millions of years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth’s surface, a large asteroid struck an area that is now the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The consequences were devastating for our planet: all forms of life were extinguished, either by the explosion or by the lack of sunlight. The impact generated a large amount of ash that rose into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight for hundreds of years.
Perhaps by the time such a scenario is repeated, humanity has already developed sufficiently advanced tools to be able to deflect or destroy such an asteroid.
