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Earth is set to see a series of asteroids fly past in the week starting January 29. According to news media reports, one of the five asteroids passing near Earth will be the size of a “FIFA-recognized stadium”. The largest of the five, asteroid 2008 OS 7, was first observed by NASA in 2008. It will zoom to a distance of 1.77 million miles from Earth on February 2, 2024, which is relatively close in cosmic terms.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) tracks the next five asteroid approaches on its Asteroid Watch website, and 2008 OS7 is one of them.
But 2008 OS7 isn’t the only space rock that will fly past our planet this week. Four other asteroids ranging from the size of a house to the size of a building will also be visible.
Meanwhile, Japan’s space agency said Thursday that its first lunar mission hit the small part of the moon’s surface it was aiming for in a successful demonstration of its pinpoint landing system — although the probe appears to have landed upside down. .
When will these asteroids pass through Earth?
On Sunday, asteroid 2024 AU4, about 260 feet wide, will fly past Earth at a safe distance of 3.92 million miles. On Tuesday, another asteroid, 2007 EG, which is about the size of an airplane, will come a little closer at 3.8 million miles.
On Thursday, two more asteroids will visit us: asteroid 2024 BY, which is the size of a house, will pass at a distance of 1.57 million miles, and asteroid 2003 BM4, also the size of an airplane, will pass at a distance of 2.06 million miles .
To put these distances in perspective, according to NASA, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 239,000 miles, and the distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 93 million miles.
NASA says most near-Earth objects (NEOs) have orbits that don’t bring them too close to Earth, and so pose no risk of impact. However, some of them, called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), are so large and so close that they require more attention.
NASA defines PHAs as asteroids and comets that are larger than 500 feet and that can come within 4.7 million miles of Earth.
One such is PHA Apophis, the so-called ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid, a massive rock about 370 yards across.
In December, NASA launched OSIRIS-Apex to study Apophis, which is expected to fly by Earth in 2029 at an astonishingly close distance of 20,000 miles. NASA says that this is the closest asteroid of this size to Earth. “The Dawn of Record History.”
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Published: Jan 29, 2024, 08:38 am IST
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