Suara.com – a asteroid a large fridge the size of a refrigerator shot past Earth last week.
Interestingly, astronomers didn’t know the object existed until hours after it disappeared.
The space rock’s trajectory on October 24 took it across Antarctica within 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Earth, closer than some satellites.
This location makes it the third closest asteroid to approach the planet without actually hitting it Space from Cnet, Sunday (7/11/2021).
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Scientists are unaware of the object, dubbed Asteroid 2021 UA1, as it approaches the daytime side of the Earth from the direction of the Sun.
So the relatively dim and small “visitors” aren’t detected until about 4 hours after passing at their closest point, according to Cnet.
But at just 6.6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, Asteroid 2021 UA1 is too small to pose a threat.
Even if it were to hit Earth, most of its rocky body would burn up in the atmosphere before it could hit the ground.
Comets and asteroids that orbit within our cosmic environment, approaching Earth within a distance of 1.3 astronomical units (120.9 million miles, or 194.5 million kilometers) are known as near-Earth objects (NEOs), according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). ) NASA.
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NASA uses telescopes on the ground and in space to find and monitor NEOs to track their orbits and identify their size, shape, and composition.
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