According to the European Space Agency (ESA), science knows a total of 3,039 asteroids near Earth and the number is rapidly increasing.
The European Space Agency says 1,425 of these asteroids can “impact” our planet, and are therefore under the “watchful eye” of a network of telescopes.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), most of the 30,000 asteroids have been discovered thanks to rapidly improving technology.
“The good news is that more than half of the near-Earth asteroids known today have been discovered in the past six years, which shows how much our vision of asteroids has improved,” said Richard Moisel, head of the planetary defense division of the Earth. ESA. Telescopes and new detection methods, it is only a matter of time before scientists find all the space rocks that are on a path that brings them closer to Earth’s orbit, called Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA).
An asteroid is called a “Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA)” when its path is within 1.3 astronomical units (au) of the Sun. An astronomical unit is the distance between the Sun and the Earth (93 million miles). , therefore, asteroids close to Earth can be located within a radius of at least 0.3 astronomical units, or 45 million kilometers, of our planet’s orbit.
Currently, near-Earth asteroids make up about one third of the nearly one million asteroids discovered so far in the solar system. Most are located in the asteroid belt, the ring-shaped region of the solar system, between Jupiter and Mars.
It is estimated that of the 3,039 newly discovered asteroids, about 10,000 are over 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter and about 1,000 are over 3,280 feet (1 km) in diameter, highlighting the need to track these space rocks.
The first near-Earth asteroid ever discovered, called “433 Eros”, was first observed by the German astronomer Carl Gustav Witt from the Berlin Observatory on August 13, 1898.
The orbit of 433 Eros, known for its strange elongated shape and rocky composition, brings the asteroid within 13.5 million miles away from Earth, 57 times the distance from the Moon.
In addition to being the first near-Earth asteroid discovered, 433 Eros became the first asteroid to be orbited around a spacecraft and the first to be landed by a spacecraft.
Fortunately, experts can find out the locations of these asteroids and whether they will hit Earth hundreds of years in the future.
It is worth noting that, on average, the Earth collides with a rock the size of a football field every 5,000 years and an asteroid is capable of ending civilization every million years, according to data from the Near-Earth Object. NASA Program.
In an effort to counter the threat of asteroids that could one day approach our planet and pose a threat to life, NASA has formed a planetary defense program, which includes the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.
DART launched from California last November and finally completed its 10-month journey when it hit the asteroid Demorphos last month, with the aim of changing its course slightly.
NASA announced earlier this month that the mission was a success, as the spacecraft managed to shorten Demorphos’ orbit by 32 minutes.
Indeed, Demorphos posed no threat to Earth, but the $ 325 million mission was proof of what it would take to defend Earth when one day it faced the threat of a space rock.
