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(NEW YORK) – Several large asteroids, including the Empire State Building, are expected to approach Earth in the coming weeks.
According to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Studies, two people are expected to fly near the planet on Saturday, and more in the coming days.
On Friday, the 2021 SM3 asteroid, which is up to 525 meters in diameter and larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, is projected to move about 3.5 million miles from Earth. informations.
Near-Earth objects are defined by NASA as “comets and asteroids that are pulled by gravity into orbits that allow nearby planets to enter the Earth’s neighborhood.”
Experts say do not be afraid, although these asteroids are relatively close to Earth, they are still very far away.
“Astronomically, they are approaching the Earth. In an interview with ABC News, Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS at NASA’s Jet Engine Laboratory in Southern California, said that from a human point of view, it is millions of miles away and millions of miles away.
The center tracks near-Earth objects for the entire asteroid community so that astronomers can know where and when they are approaching and observe their movements.
One of the closest approaches is the 2021 TJ15 asteroid, which will pass through the Earth at the same distance or 238,854 miles from the Moon on Saturday.
“The diameter of this asteroid is 5.6-13 meters. A small asteroid is approaching the distance of the Moon. It is still a long, long way, it can not hit the Earth, there is no chance,” said Chodas.
Asteroid 2004 UE, up to 1246 feet, is about the size of the Empire State Building, which will provide an approach of about 2.6 million miles from Earth on November 13.
“That’s the size of a small building. It’s close to average. But this 11-month distance is approaching consecutively, it can’t be closer than 11.11 months,” Chodas said.
The center found and tracked more than 27,000 near-Earth objects. Asteroids are small to medium-sized asteroids ranging in size from 300 meters to 600 meters, and large ones up to 1 kilometer (3280 feet) in size. He said many asteroids passing through Earth are small and ignite when they enter the planet’s atmosphere.
Chodas said that unlike the apocalyptic plots in the movies, the chances of a large asteroid hitting the planet are extremely rare.
“It’s a fact that there are very few medium and large asteroids approaching Earth to begin with,” he said. “There are relatively few large asteroids. The largest asteroid closest to Earth is something 10 kilometers away. But there are only one or two of them.”
Asteroids are discovered through observatories, cameras, telescopes and asteroid surveys that search for motion in the night sky. Once an asteroid is discovered, the center tracks their size and location, calculates an orbital trajectory to predict future movements, and learns if it is possible for it to intersect with Earth.
How often do asteroids fall to Earth?
“In the last 20 years we’ve done this, we’ve had four small asteroids that have been observed in space and going to Earth and affecting the atmosphere and burning up – small, tiny asteroids. In each case, they’ve been a brilliant fireball,” Chodas said. “In both cases, we predicted where they would hit and where the meteorites would be found. The expeditions came out and found the meteorites. So our math works very well.”
One of the most notable was the Chelyabinsk incident in Russia in February 2013.
“It was the biggest impact we’ve seen in our last memory, I think it’s a 100-year-old event. It was a 20-meter asteroid and it flashed and shattered in the atmosphere over Russia. ended and fell into a frozen lake, he said.
NASA has said that the largest asteroid to pass through the Earth this year is the 2001 FO32 Asteroid, which calls Apophis the “God of Chaos.”
Astromaterial curator and NASA researcher Michael Zolensky told ABC News that asteroids are “mostly remnants of planetary formation.”
“Some were hit and broken by other asteroids, and then some kind of empty debris came together again like traveling bags,” he said.
On Saturday, NASA’s newest asteroid probe, Lucy, took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 12-year mission to explore some asteroids called Trojans around Jupiter.
According to NASA, Lucy will be the first spacecraft to visit these asteroids, hoping that scientists will learn more about how the planets of our solar system came into being and how they ended in their current configuration.
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