A huge asteroid as large as the Eiffel Tower is zipping through space and will make a “near-Earth” approach this month. But don’t cancel your holiday plans or call Bruce Willis for help.
Experts say the giant space rock, which is about 1,082 feet wide, will not pose a threat to our planet because it will remain about 2.4 million miles away from us during its closest approach on Dec. 11.
Although that sounds very far — and it is from our vantage point here on Earth — NASA experts who monitor asteroids classify this particular rock as “potentially hazardous” because of its size and orbit, according to a report by Forbes.com.
“That classification includes any asteroid that will pass within 7.48 million kilometers (4.65 million miles) of Earth’s orbit, and is larger than about 140 meters (500 feet) across,” notes ScienceAlert.com. “There are a lot of rocks that fall into that category.”
To get some perspective on this asteroid’s size, the Eiffel Tower stretches 1,024 feet high (not including its antennas) and is 410 feet wide on the ground. By comparison, the Empire State Building is 1,250 feet tall, including its iconic spire.
The giant space rock, known as Asteroid 4660 Nereus, will be streaking past the Earth next week at a speed estimated at more than 14,000 miles per hour.
A rendering of the DART spacecraft that NASA hopes to use to redirect a large asteroid as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Although asteroids are sometimes the butt of jokes and the theme of disaster movies, they are taken very seriously by NASA because of their potential threat to our planet.
In late November, NASA launched a spacecraft on a special mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth. The DART spacecraft — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
If all goes well, the boxy, 1,200-pound craft will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an asteroid that is 525 feet wide and traveling at a speed of 15,000 mph, in September 2022.
“This isn’t going to destroy the asteroid. It’s just going to give it a small nudge,” said mission official Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the $330 million project.
A small nudge “would add up to a big change in its future position, and then the asteroid and the Earth wouldn’t be on a collision course,” Chabot said.
Dimorphos orbits a much larger asteroid called Didymos. Although the two space rocks pose no danger to Earth, scientists say they offer them a better way to measure the effectiveness of a collision than a single asteroid flying through space.
Dimorphos completes one orbit of Didymos every 11 hours, 55 minutes. DART’s goal is a crash that will slow Dimorphos down and cause it to fall closer toward the bigger asteroid, shaving 10 minutes off its orbit.
The change in the orbital period will be measured by telescopes on Earth. The minimum change for the mission to be considered a success is 73 seconds.
Experts say the DART technique could prove useful for altering the course of an asteroid years or decades before it bears down on Earth with the potential for catastrophe.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com.
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December 05, 2021 at 04:00AM
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Giant asteroid to fly near Earth this month. Here’s how close it will get. - nj.com
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