Asteroids can pose a significant danger to Earth, at least that's what the past incidents have proved so far! While most asteroids that enter Earth's atmosphere burn up and disintegrate before they can reach the surface, some larger asteroids can cause significant damage upon impact. The responsibility of monitoring near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets that have the potential to survive entry through Earth's atmosphere and endanger the planet falls on space agencies like NASA. Through the JPL watchboard, NASA provides advance notice of any potentially hazardous asteroids that are set to approach Earth.
One of these scary asteroids is coming on April 6, which is travelling at a terrifying speed of 67656 km per hour. This asteroid is named 2023 FZ3 which measures a massive 150 feet in diameter and is said to come as close as 2.61 million miles to Earth, NASA's Asteroid Watch Dashboard data showed. So, is it dangerous for Earth? Here's what NASA said.
While most near-Earth objects have orbits that don't bring them dangerously close to Earth, a subset of them, known as potentially hazardous asteroids, demand extra scrutiny. Such asteroids are at least 460 feet (140 meters) in size and have orbits that bring them as close as 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) to Earth's orbit around the Sun. To gauge any potential impact risk, CNEOS persistently tracks all identified near-Earth objects.
Hence, the giant 150-foot-wide asteroid 2023 FZ3 is not a potentially hazardous threat for Earth.
Although asteroid-tracking information is available from various sources, the majority of it is gathered by well-funded observatories backed by NASA. Examples include the Pan-STARRS, Catalina Sky Survey, and NASA's NEOWISE mission,
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