Monday, April 17, 2023

3963 - ASTEROIDS - near miss?

 

-   3963 -    ASTEROIDS  -  near miss?    The potentially hazardous asteroid “2023 FM” is larger than a 40-story building and will zoom within 7.5 lunar distances from Earth on Thursday, April 6, 2023.

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--------------------------  3963  -  ASTEROIDS  -  near miss?

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-     This skyscraper-size asteroid cruising at 35,000 mph will make a relatively close approach to Earth April 6, zooming past our planet at about 7.5 times the average distance between Earth and the moon.  Fortunately, the meaty space rock will miss our planet by more than a million miles.

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-    Astronomers estimate that the asteroid measures somewhere between 393 and 853 feet in diameter, or roughly the height of a 40- to 80-story skyscraper. During its closest approach on Thursday afternoon, the asteroid will fly within 1,800,000 miles of our planet, far beyond the orbit of the full moon, which is 250,000 miles.

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-   The space rock's formidable size, coupled with its uncomfortably close trajectory, earns it the title of a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), meaning a space rock that could measure larger than 460 feet in diameter and that could come within 4.65 million miles of Earth.

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-    NASA tracks thousands of PHAs, as even a slight, unexpected tweak to an asteroid's orbit could send it on a deadly crash course with Earth. Astronomers are constantly monitoring and recalculating these orbits, and  no collisions with PHAs are likely for at least the next 100 years.

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-   In March, astronomers detected an Olympic swimming pool-size asteroid named “2023 DW”, which initially appeared to have a 1-in-600 chance of colliding with Earth on Valentine's Day 2046, a much higher risk level than average.

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-   However, researchers with the European Space Agency have since recalculated the risk of impact to be 1 in 1,584, meaning the asteroid is almost guaranteed to miss and scientists are no longer worried about it.

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-   If a large asteroid ever appears on course for a direct impact with Earth, humans may be ready to deal with it. In September 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid called Dimorphos, significantly altering the space rock's trajectory.

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-    While Dimorphos never posed a threat to Earth, the mission proved that redirecting asteroids with rocket impacts is a viable means of planetary defense, so long as astronomers have several years (or preferably decades) to plan for the impact.

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-    After a brief flirtation with doom, the newly discovered asteroid that was given a 1-in-600 chance of slamming into Earth on Valentine's Day 2046 is now highly unlikely to hit our planet..

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-   This asteroid,  first detected on February 27, 2023, and named "2023 DW," measures about 165 feet in diameter.

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-   NASA is putting the asteroid's chances of hitting Earth at around 1-in-770, meaning it has a 99.87% chance of missing us. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Near-Earth Object Coordination Center has also lowered its risk estimate, downgrading the impact odds from a 1-in-625 chance to around 1-in-1,584.

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-    NASA tracks the locations and orbits of roughly 28,000 asteroids, following them with the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), an array of four telescopes that can perform a scan of the entire night sky every 24 hours.

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-    The space agency flags any space object that comes within 120 million miles of Earth as a "near-Earth object" and classifies any large object within 4.65 million miles of our planet as "potentially hazardous."

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-    NASA has estimated the trajectories of all these near-Earth objects beyond the end of the century. Earth faces no known danger from an apocalyptic asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years.

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-    If “2023 DW” did smash into Earth, it would not be a cataclysmic event like the 7.5-mile-wide dinosaur-killing asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago. But this doesn't mean smaller asteroids of its size aren’t dangerous.

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-   In March 2022, a bowling ball-size meteor exploded over Vermont with the force of 440 pounds of TNT. Even more dramatically, a 2013 explosion of a 59-foot-wide meteor above Chelyabinsk, Russia, generated a blast roughly equal to around 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, or 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb, and injured around 1,500 people.

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-   On September 26, 2022 the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft redirected the non-hazardous asteroid Dimorphos by ramming it off course, altering the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes in the first test of Earth's planetary defense system. NASA has since hailed the mission as a success beyond all expectations.

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-    China has also suggested it is in the early planning stages of an asteroid-redirect mission. By slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, which will swing within 4.6 million miles of Earth's orbit between the years 2175 and 2199, the country hopes to divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with our planet.

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                   April 17, 2023              ASTEROIDS  -  near miss?                  3963                                                                                                                         

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