‘Potentially hazardous’ Apollo-class asteroid sails harmlessly past Earth

An area rock the scale of a skyscraper that scientists deemed “doubtlessly hazardous” sailed harmlessly previous Earth right now (April 1) round 4:35 p.m. ET.

Despite the fact that the asteroid solely flew inside roughly 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of Earth (or  — about 30 instances the common distance between Earth and the moon), this was nonetheless the rock’s closest method to our planet because the asteroid’s discovery in 2007, in line with SpaceReference.org, a database that compiles data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the Worldwide Astronomical Union.

The asteroid — named 2007 FF1 — is an Apollo-class asteroid, which suggests it orbits the solar and  crosses the trail of Earth’s orbit, Dwell Science beforehand reported. (Astronomers know of about 15,000 such asteroids.)

2007 FF1 orbits the solar each 684 days or so, incessantly coming inside just a few tens of hundreds of thousands of miles of our planet; its final method, in August 2020, introduced the rock inside 10.8 million miles (17.3 million km) of Earth at a velocity of round 29,800 mph (47,950 km/h), in line with SpaceReference.org

Measuring between 360 and 656 ft (110 and 200 meters) in diameter, the asteroid is taken into account doubtlessly hazardous due to its measurement and comparatively shut proximity to Earth. Nonetheless, projections of the asteroid’s path over the following a number of many years present that it will not come any nearer than this for the foreseeable future. In keeping with SpaceReference.org, the following closest method is estimated to happen on April 2, 2037, when the asteroid will attain a minimal distance to Earth of round 4.9 million miles (7.9 million km). 

NASA and different house companies monitor these near-Earth objects carefully. In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft referred to as the Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART), which is able to slam head-on into the 530-foot-wide (160 m) Dimorphos asteroid in autumn 2022. The collision is not going to destroy the asteroid, however it might change the rock’s orbital path barely, Dwell Science beforehand reported. The mission will assist take a look at the viability of asteroid deflection, ought to some future asteroid pose an imminent risk to our planet.

Initially revealed on Dwell Science.