In yet another danger closing towards planet earth, NASA on Monday released a statement warning about an enormous asteroid which is headed toward the Earth. But the question that arises is will the asteroid impact our planet in any way or will it just smoothly miss the earth without disrupting anything?
Asteroid 22 RQ is already heading in the direction of Earth travelling at an astonishing speed of 49,536 and will miss the planet on September 13.
According to NASA, this asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth by nearly missing it, at a distance of 3.7 million Kilometers. NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office warned us that the size of Asteroid 22 RQ which is 84 feet wide, is almost equal to the size of an aircraft.
According to the-sky.org, Asteroid 22 RQ was discovered on September 1, 2022, and belongs to the main Apollo group of asteroids. The asteroids farthest from the sun are around 328 million kilometres and the nearest point to the sun is 110 million kilometres.
NASA also has a NEO Observations Program in place to track, record, monitor, and characterize at least 90 per cent of the NEOs that are almost 140 meters or larger in size. Maximum asteroids are observed with the help of the NEOWISE Project which repurposed NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to work as a survey telescope and scan the sky for Near-Earth Objects.
NASA JPL also uses a variety of ground-based telescopes in the hunt for these asteroids. NASA JPL's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has also recently developed a next-generation asteroid that impacts the monitoring system which has gone online.
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