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On August 16, a space rock the size of a car flew over Earth at a distance too close for comfort – about 1,830 miles. What’s even more bewildering is that NASA never saw her until after it happened.
It was the closest ever recorded, according to a Business Insider report cited, according to asteroid trackers and a catalog compiled by the Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy.
The report states that the space rock, due to its size, likely would not have posed any danger to people on the ground if it had hit our planet. But he noted that “the close call is nonetheless disturbing, as astronomers had no idea of the asteroid’s existence before it passed.”
“The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun,” Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider. “We didn’t see it coming.”
The space rock was first detected, about six hours after flying over Earth, by the Palomar Observatory in California.
The record-breaking nature of the event was confirmed by Chodas: “Yesterday’s close-up approach is the closest in history, if we rule out a few known asteroids which have indeed had an impact on our planet”, indicates The report.
According to the report, NASA is only aware of a fraction of near-Earth objects (NEOs) like this one, as many do not pass through the line of sight of any telescope, and in recent years several potentially dangerous asteroids have appeared. sneaked up on scientists. If the bad one creeps through the loopholes in our near-Earth object monitoring systems, it could kill tens of thousands of people, the report notes.
This recent near-Earth asteroid, originally named ZTF0DxQ, is now officially known to astronomers as 2020 HQ. The Business Insider report said it was first made aware of this by the creator of the orbitsimulator.com website, Tony Dunn.
Dunn tweeted Monday: “The newly discovered asteroid ZTF0DxQ yesterday exceeded less than 1/4 of Earth’s diameter, making it the closest known flyover that has not hit our planet,” according to the report.
Business Insider reported that “Early observations suggest the space rock flew over the southern hemisphere just after 4 a.m. universal time (midnight ET) on Sunday.” The report says, however, that the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center calculated a slightly different trajectory, suggesting the asteroid flew over the Pacific Ocean hundreds of kilometers east of Australia.
Not dangerous, but disconcerting.
According to the report, 2020 HQ wasn’t too dangerous, when it comes to space rocks.
“Observations from the telescope suggest the object is between 6 feet (2 meters) and 18 feet (5.5 meters) wide – somewhere between the size of a small car and an extended-cab pickup truck,” the report. According to the “Impact Earth” simulator from Purdue University and Imperial College London, although it was on the larger end of this spectrum and made of dense iron, as most asteroids are rocky, only de small pieces of such an asteroid may have reached the ground, the Business Insider report cited.
Such an asteroid would have exploded in the atmosphere.
According to the report, an asteroid like this exploded in the atmosphere, creating a glowing fireball. The air blast triggered would have been equivalent to exploding a few tens of kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as one of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in 1945. However, for people on the ground, the aerial explosion, which allegedly took place roughly 2-3 miles above the ground, would not have sounded louder than heavy traffic, according to the report.
It doesn’t take a huge boulder to create a big problem.
However, the report notes that it doesn’t take a huge space rock to create a big problem. In February 2013, an asteroid about 66 feet wide exploded without warning over Chelyabinsk, Russia, creating a superbolid event, which set off an aerial explosion equivalent to 500 kilotons of TNT – about 30 nuclear bombs of ‘Hiroshima energy, according to the report. The explosion, which began about 12 miles above Earth, set off a shockwave, shattering windows in six Russian cities and injuring around 1,500 people.
What is considered a “potentially dangerous” NEO?
“Potentially dangerous” near-Earth objects are defined as objects in space that are within 0.05 astronomical units and measure over 460 feet in diameter, according to NASA.
NASA is actively scanning the skies for such threats, which Congress has been asking since 2005. However, the report states that “the agency is mandated to detect only 90% of more ‘killer’ space rocks in the city. about 140 meters. ) in diameter. “
In May 2019, NASA said it had found less than half of the estimated 25,000 objects of this size or more, according to the report.
Objects coming from the direction of the sun, meanwhile – like 2020 HQ – are notoriously difficult to spot, according to the report.
“There isn’t much we can do to detect incoming asteroids coming from the direction of the sun, as asteroids are detected using optical telescopes only (like ZTF), and we can only search for them in the night sky. “said Chodas. “The idea is that we find them out on one of their previous passes through our planet, and then make predictions years and decades in advance to see if they have a possibility of making an impact.” , quoted the Chodas report.
NASA has a plan.
According to the Business Insider report, NASA has a plan to fill these gaps in its asteroid hunting program and is in the early stages of development of a space telescope capable of detecting asteroids and comets coming from the direction of the sun. . Nearly $ 36 million has been allocated in NASA’s 2020 budget for this telescope, called the Near Earth Object Surveillance Mission. It could be launched as early as 2025, if funding continues.
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