Airplane-sized Asteroid 2023 NE1 charging towards Earth at 20345 kmph, NASA reveals
Photo Credit: Pixabay Asteroids passing close to Earth is a common enough phenomenon. But some of them are scary as they pose a threat of a potential strike as they come too close to the planet for comfort. Now, NASA has warned that an airplane-sized asteroid is rushing towards Earth.
Photo Credit: Pixabay NASA has deployed a huge tech fleet to track asteroids. This includes the Pan-STARRS, Catalina Sky Survey, NEOWISE telescope, Goldstone Solar System Radar and more.
Photo Credit: Pixabay With the help of these spacecraft and telescopes, NASA finds asteroids that are likely to stray too close to Earth. And they have found one now and it is called Asteroid 2023 NE1.
Photo Credit: Pixabay As per the information shared by NASA’s JPL, asteroid 2023 NE1 is heading towards Earth for a close encounter on July 19.
Photo Credit: Pixabay It says that this asteroid is as big as an airplane. It measures around 190-foot in size. NASA has confirmed that it will approach Earth at a distance of merely 3.02 million miles.
Photo Credit: Pixabay NASA’s CNEOS data has further added that it is travelling at a velocity of approximately 20345 kilometers per hour.
Photo Credit: Pixabay This upcoming asteroid, classified as belonging to the Amor group, completes one orbit around the Sun every 656 days, as stated by the-sky.org.
Photo Credit: Pixabay While NASA has not classified it as a potentially hazardous asteroid, it is crucial to acknowledge that all asteroids possess a certain level of risk to Earth due to the slim possibility of deviating from their orbits, thereby presenting a potential threat of impact.
Photo Credit: Pixabay In the past, there are various examples oof asteroids that exploded over Earth. The Chelyabinsk asteroid disintegrated in the atmosphere above Russia on February 15, 2013.
Photo Credit: Pixabay According to earthsky.org, this event resulted in a shockwave that caused extensive damage to numerous buildings, shattered windows, and caused injuries to thousands of people.
Photo Credit: Pixabay To mitigate the potential risks associated with asteroids, NASA actively monitors both asteroids and comets.
Click here