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According to NASA, a "potentially dangerous" asteroid the size of a skyscraper is scheduled to fly past Earth on Tuesday (September 17).
The asteroid, named 2024 ON, is estimated to be between 220 and 480 meters in diameter and will fly past Earth at 31 km/h – or about 933 times the speed of sound, NASA warned.
During its closest approach, the asteroid will approach the Earth at a distance of about 1 million kilometers, which is about 2,6 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon. That's an incredibly narrow line by cosmic standards -- but still far enough away that no Earthling would have to worry about a space rock flying past, Live Science notes.
NASA considers any space object that comes within 193 million km of Earth to be a “near-Earth object” and classifies any large object within 7,5 million km of our planet as “potentially hazardous” . NASA tracks the location and orbits of approximately 28 asteroids by tracking them with the Earth Collision Alert System (ATLAS), an array of four telescopes that scan the entire night sky every 000 hours.
If 2024 ON were to hit Earth, it would not cause a catastrophic event like the 12 km wide asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and crashed into Earth 66 million years ago. But this does not mean that its consequences will not be far-reaching. For example, the 18 explosion of an 2013 m wide meteorite over Chelyabinsk, Russia produced an explosion roughly equivalent to about 400-500 kilotons of TNT, or 26-33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb, and injured approximately 1500 people.
Understanding the trajectories of asteroids can be a more difficult task than it seems at first glance, due to the so-called Yarkovsky effect. Named after the 19th-century engineer who first proposed it, the effect means that over long periods of time, space rocks absorb and emit enough momentum-carrying light to subtly change their orbits. This means that quantifying the Yarkovsky effect is critical in predicting which asteroids pose a potential threat.
Space agencies around the world are already working on possible ways to deflect a dangerous asteroid if it ever heads our way. On September 26, 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft redirected the safe asteroid Dimorphos, knocking it off course and changing the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes in the first test of Earth's planetary defense system. Since then, NASA has called the mission a success, exceeding all expectations.
China also said it was in the early stages of planning a mission to redirect the asteroid. By launching 23 Long March 5 rockets at asteroid Bennu, which will pass 7,4 million km from Earth's orbit between 2175 and 2199, scientists hope to further deflect the space rock from its current trajectory.
For those interested in following the course of 2024 ON as it flies past our planet, the Virtual Telescope Project will show a live stream of its path starting September 15 at 19:30 UTC when the object is visible in the Northern hemispheres
News about asteroids
There is a small risk that the "God of Chaos" asteroid Apophis could crash into Earth during its super close approach in 2029. This is evidenced by the results of a new study. The probability of such a catastrophic collision is more than one in a billion, but researchers cannot rule out such a development for at least another three years.
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