[ad_1]
An asteroid, twice the length of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, is set to fly past our planet on May 27. The asteroid is being considered the largest asteroid to make a close approach this year.
Although quite large, the asteroid will fly past from a safe distance of 4 million kilometres, which roughly equates to 10 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The space rock named 735 (1989 JA) is estimated to fly by from comparatively close quarters at a speed of 76,000 kilometres per hour. To put things in perspective, the speed of the asteroid will be 20 times the speed of a rifle bullet.
As per a report by Live Science, the asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) belongs to a class of asteroids called the Apollo class, which basically are cosmic bodies that also orbit the sun while periodically crossing or passing by the Earth’s orbit. In addition to this, the asteroid belongs to the 29,000-large family of near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) tracks every year.
The 7335 (1989 JA) asteroid, after flying past Earth on May 27, would not be making another close flyby until June 23, 2055. The researchers at the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) have put the asteroid into the category of “potentially hazardous” asteroids for the sheer size that the space rock has. Not only the size, but the “potentially hazardous” asteroids also have the possibility to evolve into that one asteroid that has a chance of colliding with the Earth.
To tighten the defences, NASA, in November 2021, launched a spacecraft under the mission Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which is aimed at Dimorphous asteroid. The collision is expected to not destroy but direct the rock into a different path.
Read all the Latest News , Breaking News and IPL 2022 Live Updates here.
[ad_2]
Source link
