A one-mile-wide asteroid passed through Earth on Friday (May 27) at a distance of about 10 times the distance between space and Earth.
The asteroid, known as Asteroid 7335 (1989 JA), is about four times the size of the Empire State Building and is the largest to pass through our planet in 2022. Viewers were able to watch the event live. online through the Virtual Telescope Project. (you can see the embedded feed below), thanks to a new collaboration that includes telescopes in Chile, Australia and Rome.
“These two live channels covering 1989 were already possible thanks to the new cooperation between the Virtual Telescope Project and Telescope Live,” founder Gianluca Masi told Space.com. “They have several telescopes around the planet, under incredible skies.”
Related: The best asteroid missions of all time (opens in a new tab)
At its closest point, the asteroid was 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) away and posed no threat to our planet, despite its large size of 1.1 miles (1 million). , 8 km) in diameter. It was bright enough to see with medium-sized telescopes.
Improving the tracking of these relatively small space rocks means that we are improving when it comes to detecting any potential impacts before they occur, so it seems like there are so many space rocks happening to us these days.
Although asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) is technically classified as “potentially dangerous (opens in a new tab)”, this was not intended to indicate an imminent threat to our planet. The designation refers to asteroids larger than 492 feet (150 meters) and the distance the asteroid approaches the Earth, among other factors.
Space agencies and telescopes around the world are monitoring space rocks. This includes NASA’s Office of Planetary Defense Coordination. You can keep track of other prominent overflights (opens in a new tab), the selected list of asteroids (opens in a new tab) that have a statistically unlikely probability of impact, and the database of small body of the agency (opens in a new tab) for Learn more about asteroids in general.
NASA has not found any immediate threats to worry about in the next 100 years, although the agency is monitoring the sky just in case.
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