Nasa says ‘close approach’ of asteroid traveling 30,000mph happened Thursday

What is considered a ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid?

Any space object that comes within 4.65 million miles of us is considered “potentially hazardous” by cautious space organizations.

How big was the asteroid?

The asteroid was up to 450 meters across.

That’s roughly the same size as the Empire State Building

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part four

Previously, scientists had to manually do calculations to try and work out the Yarkovsky effect and its impact on an asteroid’s path.

The hope is that the software can also help Nasa spot any potentially hazardous asteroids it may have missed.

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part three

The Sentry-II software will finally let scientists take the Yarkovsky effect into account when they’re trying to figure out if an asteroid is going to hit Earth.

This was something the original software, called Sentry, couldn’t do.

Davide Farnocchia, a JPL navigation engineer, said: “The fact that Sentry couldn’t automatically handle the Yarkovsky effect was a limitation.”

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, continued

Nasa will be upgrading its 20-year-old software with a new algorithm called Sentry-II, which will periodically scan a table of known potentially hazardous asteroids and their orbits.

Sentry-II will then calculate if any of the asteroids on the table or added to the table have a risk of hitting Earth.

The new system will be taking into account something called the Yarkovsky effect, which refers to when an asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits it as heat.

Nasa upgrades asteroid software

Nasa has upgraded its asteroid hazard software to better detect potentially dangerous space rocks.

The US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uses a special type of software to assess potentially hazardous asteroids that could slam into Earth.

There’s no known imminent “doomsday asteroid” on its way but astronomers check the sky often just as a precaution.

Types of asteroids- M-types

The M-types (nickel-iron): are made of metal. The compositional variations between asteroids are linked to how distant they originated from the Sun. After they formed and partially melted, some endured tremendous temperatures, with iron sinking to the center and driving basaltic (volcanic) lava to the surface.

Types of asteroids- S-types

• The S-types (stony) asteroids are made up of nickel-iron silicate minerals.

Types of asteroids- C-Type

C-Type (chondrite) are the most common asteroids. They are most likely made up of clay and silicate rocks and have a black look. They are among the solar system’s oldest ancient things.

Asteroids that approached Earth: 2022 EZ1

Amor-group Asteroid 2022 EZ1 flew near Earth around midnight UTC on March 6, after being studied for only four days before.

The 51-foot object approached Earth from 4.55million miles away, and is set to orbit nearby again in 875 days.

Asteroids that approached Earth: 2022 EM

This giant Apollo-class asteroid approached Earth on March 6, Nasa’s NEO Earth Close Approach data reveals.

2022 EM flew past Earth at a distance of 4.41million miles.

Asteroids that approached Earth: 2022 DT3

2022 DT3 flew past Earth on March 6, according to Nasa’s NEO Earth Close Approaches table, at almost 12 miles per second.

The 71-foot long asteroid was about 2.33million miles away from Earth.

Asteroids that approached Earth: 2022 DO1

2022 DO1 approached Earth on March 6 around 9:40pm.

The celestial object is about 48-feet in size mileage rate , and it came within 1.57million miles of Earth.

Asteroids that approached Earth: 2020 DC

First observed on February 16, this small body is approximately 51 feet in size.

On March 7, the Apollo-class Asteroid approached the Earth as its orbit crossed the Earth’s orbit, but it was not considered potentially hazardous.

The house-sized body came 924,000 miles away from Earth.

What is considered a ‘close approach’?

If an asteroid comes within 4.65million miles of Earth and is over a certain size, it is considered “potentially hazardous” by cautious space agencies.

2023 asteroid turns out to be safe

The finding of a potentially deadly asteroid earlier this year sent scientists on a roller coaster trip.

Astronomers at Arizona’s Mount Lemmon Observatory detected a 70-meter-wide asteroid on January 6, 2022.

Based on their early observations, this object looked to have a chance of colliding with Earth on its next visit, on July 4, 2023.

Because any ambiguities in an asteroid’s orbit are greatest in the hours following its discovery, astronomers from a variety of observatories hurried to perform follow-up observations, which normally rule out any future collisions.

London Eye-sized

Science Times noted that the asteroid passing Earth on Thursday “is approximately three times larger than the London Eye.”

Relatable distance

On Twitter, IFL Science shared a hilarious comparison in regards to the size of the asteroid that passed Earth yesterday.

“An asteroid is on course to pass Earth today at a mere distance of 3,180,000 miles!” the tweet read.

“This chunk of space rock measures in at a whopping 850ft diameter – or in terms we can all understand, 2,237 ferrets.”

Water may flow on asteroid surfaces

Vesta observations from 2015 reveal gullies that may have been sculpted by water.

According to the theory, when a smaller asteroid collides with a larger one, the smaller asteroid releases a layer of ice in the larger asteroid.

The contact converted the ice into water, which flashed over the surface for a brief while.

How far was Asteroid 138971 from Earth?

It shot past us on March 4 from an estimated distance of 3million miles away.

In comparison, the Moon is only about 238,900 miles rate from us.

A few million miles may sound pretty far away but it’s actually quite close in terms of space.

What is Asteroid 138971?

Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) was said to be up to 4,265 feet wide.

That made it almost three times as big as the Empire State Building.

The Empire State Building stands at around 1,453 feet tall so would pale in comparison to Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21).

Nasa had put the asteroid on its ‘Earth Close Approaches’ list.

Will an asteroid hit Earth soon?

According to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, no asteroids represent a major risk of colliding with Earth in the next 100 years.

Sulfur killed the dinosaurs, part two

This new information was discovered during a site investigation in Falls County, Texas.

Scientists researched sediment samples and discovered a unique sulfur interaction that they had never seen before.

Lead researcher James Witts told Nature World News that the sulfur reactions they were seeing can only happen “in an environment with no oxygen or when there is so much sulfur in the atmosphere that it has gotten extremely high up into an oxygenated atmosphere.”

Climate scientists believe they can use this newfound information to learn more about climate change in our current environment.

Sulfur killed the dinosaurs

New scientific research suggests that the dino-killing asteroid brought massive amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere.

A study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said the sulfur introduced into the atmosphere cooled the climate and caused acid rain for decades.

Apparently, this acid rain had huge effects on the climate, doing irreversible damage to land animals and seriously affecting marine life.

If an asteroid hit the Earth, part three

“So you burn things, kill everything in the ocean, and freeze the Earth, and it goes through about two years of constant winter,” Scharringhausen added.

He doesn’t think that all life on Earth would die after a large asteroid impact since some small creatures survived the asteroid strike that once killed the dinosaurs.

Scharringhausen explained: “Not everything will die. If we’re thinking about people, the way to survive would be to get underground.”

“You could maybe ride it out in a bunker if you’ve got the supplies to make it through that period of winter where you can’t grow any edible food.”

“Maybe the finicky crops that humans like to grow won’t come through it so well, but there’s that seed repository, so if those are well-protected enough, you could get agriculture restarted.”