House-size Asteroid MH4 speeding towards Earth! Know how close it will come

[ad_1]

Asteroid 2023 MH4 is racing at a furious speed towards Earth, and according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it will make a very close pass. This Asteroid’s size is equal to the height of a two-story house, making it 45 feet tall. The asteroid is scheduled to pass by Earth on June 27, as per the NASA report.

Asteroid 2023 MH4 details

According to NASA, the asteroid will come the closest to Earth on June 27. It will come as close to Earth as 644,000 miles. Currently, it is moving at a speed of 45629 kilometers per hour. Asteroid 2023 MH4 was discovered as recently as on June 24, 2023. It has been classified as a near-Earth object belonging to the Aten group. It makes one orbit around the Sun in 266 days.

Will this asteroid have any serious consequences for Earth? NASA’s JPL says that this asteroid “isn’t a potential hazard”.

 

The technology behind asteroid tracking

The latest advancement in technology has equipped researchers with various methodologies to calculate the date, speed, size and other details of all asteroids that come close to Earth. With the help of the NEO observation program, the asteroid’s location can be detected, which helps researchers to analyze its potential risks.

With advanced telescopes like NEOWISE, NASA detects and finds hundreds of space objects and asteroids that can be serious threats to Earth. The orbit calculation and physical properties of the object are also studied using various other telescopes.

Asteroid avoidance strategies

Considering the fact that collisions with large space objects has shaped much of the Earth’s history over billions of years, NASA and other space agencies across the world are not just tracking asteroids, comets and other space objects, but they are also experimenting with various preventive measures. The latest one that was tried by NASA was called DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) in which the US space agency crashed a spacecraft against an asteroid and successfully managed to move it from its orbit. The same strategy can be deployed against any space object that threatens to crash into Earth.

[ad_2]

Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *