SPACE — A ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid that spans the length of the Eiffel Tower will zip past Earth today, April 27, 2023. But don’t worry, according to NASA, the enormous space rock will sail safely past our planet.
The Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated that the asteroid named 2006 HV5 will reach its closest point to Earth at around 11.00 WIB at a distance of about 2.4 million kilometers. That’s six times farther than our planet’s distance from the moon.
“2006 HV5 is estimated to be about 307 meters wide, plus or minus 76 meters,” CNEOS said. In comparison, the Eiffel Tower stands 330 m high.
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The hefty space rock is moving at a speed of about 62,600 km/h relative to Earth. 2006 HV5 orbits the sun in about 282 days.
Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) are asteroids larger than 140 m in diameter and within 7.48 million km of Earth, or approximately 20 times the average distance between Earth and the moon. There are about 2,300 known PHAs, and most of them will never come close to Earth. Even so, their size is enough to cause great damage if they attack our planet.
However, if one of the goliaths makes a beeline for Earth, NASA is pretty confident it can nudge it in the right direction. This was thanks to the Double Asteroid Diversion Test (DART) mission in September 2022. At that time, NASA managed to direct the trajectory of the asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into the target.
2006 HV5 isn’t the only PHA to have passed Earth recently. On April 6, 2023, a PHA measuring between 120 and 260 m passed within 2.9 million km of Earth. Meanwhile on February 15, the enormous PHA, 580 to 1,300 m, passed Earth at a distance of about 4.5 million km.
Between February 27 and February 28, two more PHAs, 2006 BE55 and 2012 DK31, which are roughly the same size at about 137 m, passed safely past Earth, along with a third, smaller asteroid. Source: LiveScience
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2023-04-26 17:51:24
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