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A newly found asteroid in regards to the measurement of a college bus will zoom by Earth at a spread nearer than our moon on Thursday (Feb. 22), nevertheless it should not pose a risk to our planet.
Called 2024 DW, the newfound asteroid is about 42 ft (13 meters) extensive and can fly inside 140,000 miles (225,000 kilometers) of the Earth when it passes by us on Thursday. That’s nearer than the common distance to the moon, which orbits about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) from Earth, according to NASA.
Related: An asteroid will hit Earth at some point. What can we do about it?
Asteroid 2024 is only one of a number of so-called “potentially hazardous asteroids” — house rocks with orbits that convey them inside 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of the Earth — that may fly by our planet on Feb. 22. However, it will likely be the closest. Another bus-sized asteroid will cross at a spread of 482,000 miles (775,000 km), whereas an asteroid the scale of a jumbo jet will fly by at comfy distance of two.5 million miles (4 million km), based on a NASA list of the next five asteroid flybys.
Asteroid 2024 DW was first found on Feb. 19 by astronomers with the Mt. Lemmon Survey. This survey is a part of the continued Catalina Sky Survey to trace near-Earth asteroids that might probably threaten our planet, according to a database from the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC) on the Harvard-Smithsonian Carnegie Center for Astrophysics.
Scientists initially used the Steward Observatory at Mt. Lemmon Station within the Santa Catalina Mountains northeast of Tucson, Arizona to identify the asteroid. Subsequent observations with a University of Hawaii telescope atop the Mauna Kea volcano confirmed the discover, based on the MPC.
Astronomers and NASA scientists recurrently preserve look ahead to near-Earth asteroids that will put up an impression threat to Earth. In September 2022, NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed right into a small asteroid in a profitable test of an asteroid deflection technique that might in the future assist safeguard our planet. A yr later, in September 2023, the company’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft introduced samples of one other house rock, asteroid Bennu, to Earth to raised perceive the composition of the article.
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