National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), last week, informed about a ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid, 2020 ND. The asteroid, as per the organization, will move past the Earth today. At the same time, the organization has also stated that the asteroid will not impact the planet and will not cause any serious damage.
Asteroids, as per NASA, are “rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago”. There are currently over 9,89,246 asteroids which are known, as recorded by the American agency.
According to the space agency, the asteroid is about 480 feet in size and around 170 metre-long, making it bigger than the London Eye. It will be as close as 0.034 astronomical unites or over 5 lakh km to Earth. Travelling with a speed of 48,000 kilometre per hour, the asteroid, in one of the statements by the agency was termed as “potentially dangerous”.
According to the American space agency NASA, “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth”. The statement also informed that the asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance of 0.05 aeronautical units or less, fall under the category of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).
The asteroids that come close to the Earth fall under the umbrella of Near-Earth Objects (NEO). These have been described by NASA as “nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood”.
It is also important to note that, with the asteroids falling under these terms, it is not necessary that they will impact the earth. However, it does highlight the fact there could be a possibility for the same.
