For hundreds of thousands of years, asteroids have posed a menace to Earth. Though humanity solely found its first-ever asteroid on January 1, 1801, these historic area rocks have repeatedly impacted Earth’s floor, altering the course of historical past. To grasp asteroids higher, and research those not situated within the asteroid belt, NASA launched its Lucy mission on October 16, 2021, from the Kennedy Area Heart in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It’s aimed toward learning the Trojans, a gaggle of asteroids that orbit the Solar in two teams, in response to NASA. It’s constructed to hunt out trojan asteroids hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Earth. Lately, the spacecraft caught a glimpse of its first Trojan asteroid, Dinikinesh, which is about half a kilometer huge.
With the assistance of comparable area and ground-based telescopes and different superior technological devices, NASA has revealed that one other asteroid is dashing in the direction of Earth right now.
Asteroid 2023 RH2 particulars
The asteroid, given the designation of Asteroid 2023 RH2, is already on its approach in the direction of Earth travelling at a staggering velocity of 77303 kilometers per hour in its orbit across the Solar. NASA expects this asteroid to make its closest strategy to Earth right now, September 13, and it’ll cross by a distance of just about 4.three million kilometers.
In keeping with NASA, this asteroid just isn’t small both. With a width of just about 180 ft, it may be in comparison with an plane! Whereas it’s not large enough to be known as a planet-killer, it might nonetheless probably trigger injury, particularly if it crashed in a densely populated area. This area rock belongs to the Apollo group of Close to-Earth Asteroids, that are Earth-crossing area rocks with semi-major axes bigger than Earth’s. These asteroids are named after the humongous 1862 Apollo asteroid, found by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth within the 1930s.
Shockingly, this will likely be Asteroid 2023 RH2’s first-ever shut strategy to Earth in historical past. As per the small print offered by NASA’s Small-Physique Database Lookup, it won’t make one other shut strategy to the planet within the close to future.
