An asteroid up to 3 times increased than a blue whale will zoom past Earth on Monday (June 6) at bigger than 16,000 mph (26,000 km/h), in accordance with NASA (opens in fresh tab).
The asteroid, named 2021 GT2, is predicted to soundly pass over our planet by bigger than 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) — or roughly 10 times the life like distance between Earth and the moon. Astronomers first detected the residence rock final twelve months and estimated its size at between 121 and 272 ft (37 to 83 meters) huge. Whereas that sounds pretty nice — between one and 3 times the length of a blue whale (opens in fresh tab) — it’s now no longer nice ample to be even handed a doable hazard to Earth.
2021 GT2 is an Aten-class asteroid, that plan it orbits the sun extra carefully than Earth does (once every 342 days, in this case), and its orbital path crosses Earth’s orbit. Astronomers know of larger than 1,800 such asteroids — pretty just a few which are even handed potentially unsafe.
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After June 6, its next end just about Earth will happen on Jan. 26, 2034, when the asteroid passes inner 9 million miles (14.5 million km) of our planet — seriously farther out than the upcoming near.
The asteroid is even handed a end to-Earth object — a term given to asteroids and comets that orbit inner 1.3 tall objects of the sun. (An tall unit is the distance between Earth and the sun, about 93 million miles, or 149.6 million km.) NASA displays tens of thousands of these objects, predicting the trajectories of every one from present day to hundreds of years into the future. For the time being, astronomers make now no longer think that any end to-Earth objects pose a threat to Earth.
Silent, scientists want to be engaging if a end to-Earth asteroid’s trajectory would possibly per chance well additionally aloof alternate following an unexpected incident — recount, one end to-Earth asteroid colliding into any other and showering nice chunks of debris in the heart of the solar system.
NASA is presently in the heart of attempting out whether or now no longer a nice asteroid would be knocked off beam by crashing a rocket into it. In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART), which is in a plan to slam head-on into the 530-foot-huge (160 m) Dimorphos asteroid in autumn 2022. The collision is now no longer going to execute the asteroid, but it goes to additionally alternate the rock’s orbital path rather of, Stay Science previously reported.
At the inspiration printed on Stay Science.