Kilometer-Wide Asteroid To Pass By Earth Next Week

(CNN) — An asteroid estimated to beryllium a kilometer (3,451 feet) wide volition alert by Earth connected January 18.

It volition walk wrong 1.2 cardinal miles of our planet, moving astatine 47,344 miles per hour, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks perchance hazardous comets and asteroids that could collide with our planet.

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The approaching asteroid is known arsenic 7482 (1994 PC1) and it was discovered successful 1994, according to NASA.

Nobody expects 7482 (1994 PC1) to deed Earth, but it’s the closest the asteroid volition travel for the adjacent 2 centuries, according to NASA projections. The flyby is expected to instrumentality spot connected Tuesday January 18 astatine 4.51 p.m. ET.

It won’t beryllium the largest asteroid to ever expanse past Earth. That grant belongs to the asteroid 3122 Florence (1981 ET3), which flew by and missed colliding with Earth connected September 1, 2017. That asteroid is estimated to beryllium betwixt 2.5 miles and 5.5 miles wide, and it marque different walk again connected September 2, 2057.

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While 7482 (1994 PC1) is improbable to beryllium disposable with the bare eye, amateur astronomers with a tiny scope should beryllium capable to spot it, according to the website EarthSky.com.

In September this year, a NASA spacecraft volition deliberately clang into an asteroid to alteration its question successful abstraction — investigating exertion developed to deflect an asteroid hit.

Known arsenic the DART mission, oregon the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the spacecraft is aiming for Dimorphos, a tiny satellite orbiting the near-Earth asteroid Didymos.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that spot them wrong 30 cardinal miles (48 cardinal kilometers) of Earth. Detecting the menace of near-Earth objects, oregon NEOs, that could perchance origin sedate harm is simply a superior absorption of NASA and different abstraction organizations astir the world.

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