Asteroid marked ‘potentially hazardous’ will flout social distancing as it skims Earth this week
The asteroid 1998 OR2 has been marked by Nasa as passing 'close' to Earth
Nasa is on the alert for an asteroid set to pass close to Earth next week.
The American space agency is constantly monitoring the space around us for asteroids that could pose a risk to life on Earth.
Anything that comes within a certain range is deemed a Near Earth Object (NEO) and, in some cases, ‘potentially hazardous’.
That’s the designation of asteroid 1998 OR2, which is set to pass by Earth on Wednesday, April 29. The asteroid will miss us by a distance of 0.04205 astronomical units (AU) or 3,908,791 miles.
It seems like a long way off – it’s 16 times the distance to the moon – but in space terms it’s a near miss. It’s definitely close enough to be flouting galactic social distancing terms.
Travelling at a speed of 19,461mph the asteroid measures a colossal 1.2 miles in diameter. That’s big enough to cause cataclysmic ‘global events’ if it did end up hitting Earth.
Thankfully, Nasa and other space agencies have known about this particular space rock for some time. It was discovered in 1998 (which forms part of its name) and its orbit and other vital statistics are recorded in Nasa’s extensive database.
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‘As they orbit the Sun, NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth,’ Nasa wrote.
‘Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.’
Despite its distance, it still falls into the ‘potentially hazardous’ category.
‘Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth,’ Nasa said in a statement.
Nasa’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) explains further: ‘On a daily basis, about one hundred tons of interplanetary material drifts down to the Earth’s surface.’
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‘Most of the smallest interplanetary particles that reach the Earth’s surface are the tiny dust particles that are released by comets as their ices vaporize in the solar neighborhood.
‘The vast majority of the larger interplanetary material that reaches the Earth’s surface originates as the collision fragments of asteroids that have run into one another some eons ago.’
The agency does go into some detail about would would happen if one of these rocks did end up smashing into us: ‘With an average interval of about 10,000 years, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 100 meters would be expected to reach the Earth’s surface and cause local disasters or produce the tidal waves that can inundate low lying coastal areas.’
‘On an average of every several hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a kilometer could cause global disasters. In this case, the impact debris would spread throughout the Earth’s atmosphere so that plant life would suffer from acid rain, partial blocking of sunlight, and from the firestorms resulting from heated impact debris raining back down upon the Earth’s surface.
‘Since their orbital paths often cross that of the Earth, collisions with near-Earth objects have occurred in the past and we should remain alert to the possibility of future close Earth approaches.
‘It seems prudent to mount efforts to discover and study these objects, to characterize their sizes, compositions and structures and to keep an eye upon their future trajectories.’
So, when we’ve all finished with life under lockdown it’ll be time to get back to figuring out how to avoid annihilation from some wayward space rock.