Tomorrow, an asteroid the size of a stadium that may be dangerous will pass close to Earth at a distance of about 2,850,000 kilometers (1,770,000 miles). The Virtual Telescope Project is providing a live broadcast of the asteroid for aficionados of space rock.
As its name implies, asteroid 2008 OS7 was originally observed on July 30, 2008, during the Catalina Sky Survey. NASA estimates that the asteroid, which completes one circuit of the Sun every 2.64 years, has a diameter of around 284.8 meters (934.4 ft), or roughly 194 Danny DeVitos (158 Arnold Schwarzeneggers) across.
As the asteroid is expected to pass less than 0.05 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, there is no need for concern. The asteroid will pass by innocuously at a distance of about 7.4 times the usual lunar distance, even though this may not seem like a great distance. An AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
“This asteroid will not enter Earth’s atmosphere, so we don’t need to worry about it too much, even though it will still approach close to Earth,” Dr. Minjae Kim, Research Fellow at the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics, told PA.
NASA and other observatories monitor the orbits of objects found in the Solar System, with a focus on “near-Earth objects” that are 140 meters (460 feet) or larger and have the potential to produce catastrophic impacts if they were to collide with Earth. Astronomers can currently forecast an object’s orbit for up to 100 years in the future. NASA reports that “no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years,” which is fantastic news.
Even though we find new items all the time, sometimes right before they strike, another technique has determined that we should be safe from the ones we do know about for the next 1,000 years.
It is difficult to evaluate the impact risk over longer time horizons because orbital uncertainties increase. The study’s authors stated in their publication from the previous year that to get around this restriction, “we analyze the evolution of the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID), which bounds the closest possible encounters between the asteroid and the Earth.” “The evolution of the MOID highlights NEOs that are in the vicinity of the Earth for longer periods, and we propose a method to estimate the probability of a deep Earth encounter during these periods.”
The study concludes that there is little possibility of getting hit before the year 3000. The most likely object to reach Earth is 7482 (1994 PC1), which has a 0.00151 percent chance of coming close and orbiting Earth closer than the Moon.