New Delhi: Five asteroids are headed towards our planet between September 16 and 22, according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard. Here are the details:
Asteroid 2022 QD1
The building-sized asteroid measures 250-ft wide. It will come closest to earth on September 16 at 7.45 million kilometres.
Asteroid 2005 RX3
The size of a building, it’s about 390-ft wide. It will be closest to earth on September 18, flying at a distance of about 4.74 million kilometres.
Asteroid 2022 QB37
The size of an aeroplane, the asteroid is about 180-ft wide. Closest encounter with earth will be on September 18 when it will fly past the planet at a distance of roughly 4 million kilometres.
Asteroid 2022 QJ50
Also the size of an aeroplane, its closest encounter with earth will be on September 19. About 110-ft wide, it will fly past earth at about 2.6 million kilometres.
Asteroid 2022 QH8
This aeroplane-sized asteroid, which is about 170-ft wide, will fly closest to earth on September 22 at a distance of 2.5 million kilometres.
NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard tracks asteroids and comets that make relatively close approaches to earth.
The dashboard displays the next five earth approaches to within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometres or 19.5 times the distance to the moon), according to NASA. An object larger than about 150 metres that can approach the earth to within this distance is termed a potentially hazardous object.
The average distance between earth and the moon is about 239,000 miles or 385,000 kilometres.
Asteroids are enormous space rocks — left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago — that orbit the sun.
NASA deploys its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft to protect the planet from the rocky fragments.
A spacecraft is launched into an asteroid’s core to deflect it from the original path.
Source: NASA
