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Asteroid flybys have been very frequent these past few months with over 35 asteroids passing by in the month of August, and September is likely to surpass this number. 5 asteroids passed by Earth very closely and astonishingly, 5 more asteroid flybys are expected today. 2 huge asteroids have already sped past the planet during the early hours today.
Asteroid 2022 ST3 sped past Earth today, Sept 28
A huge asteroid ranging anywhere between 78 feet and 174 feet just missed the Earth by a very close margin during early hours. The asteroid made its close approach with our planet at a distance of 6.8 million kilometers. The asteroid was travelling at a blistering speed of 63144 kilometers per hour! Although Asteroid 2022 SF was not expected to impact the Earth, it was still classified as a Potentially Hazardous Object due to the close proximity by which it passed Earth.
According to the-sky.org, Asteroid 2022 ST3 belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt near Jupiter. The asteroid orbits the Sun and takes 1068 days to complete one trip. During this orbit, its maximum distance from the Sun is 508 million kilometers and its nearest distance is 104 million kilometers.
Did you Know?
How did NASA capture spacecraft hitting the asteroid? Check out the tech behind it. The historic NASA DART test was captured through cameras of a small companion satellite which was ejected from DART spacecraft and followed it, 3 minutes behind, to the target asteroid Dimorphos. The spacecraft’s camera is named cubeSAT LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids). The cubeSAT is made up of two key components, LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) and LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid), both of which capture key data from the collision.
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