310-foot asteroid coming dangerously close to Earth, NASA reveals

NASA has raised an asteroid warning for Asteroid 2008 RW. It seems that even the month of September is not safe from asteroid flybys. August was an eventful month where more than 40 asteroids passed closely by Earth. September has also seen nearly a dozen asteroids going into just the second week of the month. Now, NASA has issued yet another warning about an asteroid that is heading for Earth at dangerous speeds. To study asteroids that are not in the asteroid belt, NASA has the Lucy Space Mission. NASA launched its Lucy spacecraft on Oct. 16, 2021 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Asteroid 2008 RW heading for Earth

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office has warned that a colossal 310-foot wide asteroid, named Asteroid 2022 RW is heading for Earth. It is expected to fly past the planet very closely on September 12. According to NASA, the asteroid is already hurtling towards Earth at a hair-raising speed of 36,720 kilometers per hour. It will make its closest approach to Earth on September 12 at a distance of nearly 6.7 million kilometers.

Asteroid 2008 RW is not expected to impact with Earth but was still classified as a “Potentially Hazardous Object” due to the close proximity with which it will pass by Earth. Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are classified as Potentially Hazardous Objects if they come within 8 million kilometers of the Earth. Swinburne University of Technology says, "If the orbit of a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) is such that there is a (typically small) chance it will collide with the Earth and cause significant damage at some point in the future, it is also labelled a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA)."

According to the-sky.org, the Asteroid 2008 RW was discovered on September 8, 2008 and belongs to the main Apollo group of asteroids. The asteroid orbit’s farthest point from the Sun is 456 million kilometers, and the nearest point to the Sun is 139 million kilometers. Asteroid 2008 RW takes 1023 days to complete one orbit around the Sun.

This is NASA’s first space mission to study the Trojans, a group of asteroids which orbit the Sun in two groups. It is built to seek out trojan asteroids millions of miles from Earth.