What are Potentially Hazardous Asteroids? Know all about the Earth's greatest space threat

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 Know the details about the potentially hazardous asteroids, one of the biggest threats for Earth. Check it out.

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 According to NASA, the Near Earth objects or NEOs are the asteroids that come within a range of 50 million kilometers to the Earth.

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Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are a subset of NEOs. NASA says that any NEO asteroids that are larger than 140 meters in diameter (460 feet).

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And have a probability of coming closer than 7.48 million kilometers (4.65 million miles) to the Earth are considered to be the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.

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The potentially hazardous asteroids are the asteroids which are the highest-risk asteroids and can cause harm to our planet.

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As per the NASA CNEOS website, as many as 31000 NEOs have been discovered by the space agency.

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Among the 31000 NEOs nearly 2300 have been identified as potentially hazardous asteroids.

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NASA further informs that many of these asteroids were once part of the main asteroid belt but as the solar system evolved, they shifted their orbit slightly, moving out of the belt.

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NASA and other space agencies work and keep a keen watch on all the potentially hazardous asteroids to assess the risk before they turn fatal.

 Recently, NASA launched the DART mission where it launched a spacecraft to hit an asteroid and change its orbit in order to test a new asteroid defense mechanism.