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An asteroid the dimensions of the Statue of Liberty will zip by Earth within the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Labeled 2013 WV44, the 300-foot-long (91-meter-long) asteroid is touring at an astonishing pace of seven.3 miles (11.8 kilometers) per second, so it’s an excellent factor that it’s not stopping off right here.
The place of Earth and asteroid 2013 WV44 throughout their shut encounter. NASA
NASA’s Middle for Close to Earth Object Research has calculated that the flying rock, which it began monitoring 10 years in the past, will cross by at a secure distance of about 2 million miles (3.3 million kilometers) at 4 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Which will look like an enormous distance, and in some ways it’s, however when you think about it by way of the dimensions of our photo voltaic system, it feels rather more like a really shut encounter.
Asteroids are hurtling by Earth’s neighborhood on a regular basis, and fortunately only a few pose a severe menace. However it doesn’t imply that Earth won’t ever face a dangerous state of affairs sooner or later, particularly as we all know that our planet has already suffered some catastrophic asteroid strikes. That’s why the likes of NASA and its European counterpart, ESA, are spending a lot money and time on monitoring deep house for such threats.
Eager to discover methods of coping with a big asteroid calculated to be heading proper for us, NASA final 12 months examined a system designed to change the trajectory of such an object. The DART mission smashed a spacecraft right into a non-hazardous asteroid removed from Earth, and information confirmed that it succeeded in altering its course, paving the way in which for engineers to work on refining the system to make it as efficient as potential.
“A comparatively small variety of near-Earth objects cross shut sufficient to Earth and are massive sufficient in measurement to warrant shut remark,” NASA says on its web site. “That’s as a result of the gravitational tug of the planets might, over time, trigger an object’s orbital path to evolve into an Earth-crossing orbit. This enables for the potential for a future collision.”
If we’re ever confronted with a cataclysmic asteroid encounter, you may (if there’s time) pop over to this useful web site to study extra in regards to the extent of the harm that it’s prone to trigger.
Tonight, although, you may sleep soundly, safe within the information that 2013 WV44’s flight path received’t even trigger your curtains to flutter.
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