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NASA has issued yet another alert with another asteroid expected to pass Earth today closely. Will it crash or burn? Know what NASA said.
What if an asteroid is headed straight for a collision with the Earth? Will it cause annihilation on a small part of the planet or engulf it totally? Or will humanity survive? If you have ever had such questions, be ready to get them answered as NASA has a plan in place to protect the Earth from potential asteroid impact. NASA’s $240 million Double Asteroid Detection Test or DART aims to smash a spacecraft into the Dimorphos asteroid to deflect it away from its path to gain greater knowledge as to what happens when a craft is crashed against a space rock. But before this test can take place, NASA has warned that an asteroid, today, is on its way to Earth.
Asteroid 2022 SW1
NASA has warned that an asteroid named Asteroid 2022 SW1 is heading dangerously for Earth today, September 20. The asteroid is already on its way travelling at a staggering speed of 36252 kilometers per hour. NASA says the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth today at a distance of just 679,000 kilometers, making it one of the closest asteroid encounters we have had this month.
The terrifying Asteroid 2022 SW1 was discovered on September 18, 2022 and belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt near Jupiter. The asteroid takes almost 1013 days to complete one orbit around the Sun during which its distance from the Sun at its farthest point is 451 million kilometers and at its nearest point is 139 million kilometers.
Did you know?
NASA has a mission in place to study the rising solar activity of the Sun. NASA’s SunRISE mission, which stands for the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, is an upcoming mission expected to launch in 2024 to study and pinpoint how giant bursts of energetic particles originate from the Sun and evolve as they expand outward into space.
According to NASA, the SunRISE mission will have a radio telescope in orbit with an array of six toaster-size CubeSats that will work together to study solar activity. NASA says the six CubeSats will span roughly six miles across and fly slightly above geosynchronous orbit at 22,000 miles from Earth’s surface.
The mission will observe low radio frequency emissions to better understand the generation of Solar Storms as well as other explosive space events. This research will help scientists forecast space weather, improve our understanding of how our Sun works, and may apply to studies of other stars.
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