Scary! 77-foot Asteroid heading towards Earth today, says NASA
A huge aeroplane-sized space rock dubbed Asteroid 2022 SR1 is heading for Earth and will come very close today, on September 29, 2022. The space rock was some 4.64 million kilometres, equivalent to 0.02 astronomical units away from earth. And hence, it is close enough for astronomers to study the asteroid using radar. According to data from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the flyby of the asteroid is estimated to happen at just 2,880,000 miles from Earth. It is travelling at 6 kilometers per second. This asteroid is 77 feet long.
As reported by www.sky.org, Nasa's Planetary Defense Coordination Officekeep a track of all the space rocks heading to earth. The portal reported, “the asteroid 2022 SR1 is currently in the southeast in the constellation of Sculptor at an altitude of 13° above the horizon. It will sink towards the horizon around tomorrow 05:26.”
It was first detected on September 17, 2022. It belongs to the Amor group and makes one orbit around the Sun in 834 days.
This is not the only asteroid that will make its close pass to earth. Asteroid 2022 SG11 and SH12 are also supposed to make a close pass to Earth today. There are a few more space rocks visiting us in the upcoming days too. Nasa keeps sharing the information on its official portal. However, none of these seem to be a threat to our planet.
Meanwhile, Nasa has created a history by successfully deflecting the asteroid from its set path by using Kinetic impact. Nasa's DART mission is a huge success as it crashed into the target asteroid Dimorphous. This will help Nasa in future to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids heading for earth. However, it is still not known whether the asteroid was actually deflected.
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
