The space rock – which has a diameter of about 1000 meters – passes our planet at a distance of ‘only’ just over 4 million kilometers.
The asteroid in question is named 7335 1989JA. And next Wednesday at 4:26 p.m., the distance between the space rock and our planet will be smallest, reaching 4.02 million kilometers. This makes the distance between our planet and the space rock about 10 times greater than the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Do not panic
We therefore have nothing to fear from this space rock, NASA emphasizes. Nevertheless, it is a special shaving flight. Because with a size of 1036 meters 7335 1989JA is quite unique. Of the nearly 29,000 near-Earth near-Earth asteroids – asteroids that venture near our planet – discovered to date, only 878 are larger than 1000 meters.
It is therefore not very often that such a large asteroid ventures near the Earth. In fact; 7335 1989JA is the largest asteroid to pass at a relatively short distance this year.
More flybys
The fact that space rocks skim past our planet is of course not very special in itself. In fact, according to NASA, there are dozens of space rocks that zoom past Earth every month within 0.05 AU (ie 0.05 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, or nearly 7.5 million kilometers). We have known some of them for years. But it also regularly happens that an asteroid is only discovered shortly before it ventures into the vicinity of our planet.
No danger
Although most near-Earth objects are quite small and therefore do not pose a huge threat to the earth, there are of course also specimens that are fearsome in terms of size. At the moment, however, researchers are not aware of any large asteroids that pose a significant threat to Earth in the short term (in the next 100 years).
Potentially dangerous
There is, however, a list of potentially dangerous asteroids. On this list we find more than 2000 asteroids that occasionally venture within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth and/or are larger than 140 meters. 7335 1989JA can also be counted among the potentially dangerous asteroids on the basis of that definition. That certainly does not mean that it is doomed to become a danger to the earth in the future. It just indicates that we are dealing here with an asteroid that ventures relatively close to Earth and is of such magnitude that a collision with Earth would have catastrophic consequences. Whether such a collision will also take place is another story; that is highly dependent on the orbit of the space rock. As new nearers are discovered, astronomers try to make as many observations as possible to determine their orbit as accurately as possible. Because if you know the orbit of an asteroid, you can predict where it will be in the future and determine whether it will come dangerously close to Earth in that future. And again; so for the potentially dangerous asteroids known to us, none of them has a significant chance of hitting Earth in the short term – ie in the next 100 years.
Future flybys
Also 7335 1989YES not. Astronomers now have a pretty good idea of the orbit of this asteroid. For example, they know that it will skim past Earth again in June 2055. And also in May 2081 and May 2114 the asteroid will pass by again. However, none of these flybys will bring the asteroid as close as it will next Wednesday.
Although we are currently not aware of any asteroids that pose a danger to Earth, we do know that our planet cannot always escape the dance. Several craters can be found on the earth’s surface that testify to previous impacts. Some of them – such as the impact some 66 million years ago in what is now Mexico – had a huge impact on our planet. Should a large asteroid nevertheless end up on a collision course with Earth in the future, researchers hope to be able to avert a similar doomsday scenario. By changing the orbit of the asteroid. There will be some practice with this soon, during the DART mission. This mission will take you to the asteroid Didymos, which is surrounded by a small moon called Dimorphos. During the mission, the DART spacecraft will deliberately crash itself into the tiny moon, aiming to alter its orbit. The experiment should show whether the method is suitable for deflecting dangerous asteroids in the future.