A massive asteroid, estimated to be up to 1.3km in diameter, is heading towards us and will pass next month. The potentially dangerous asteroid, known as 138971 (2001 CB21), will come close to 4.5 million km. But scientists say there’s no need to worry because the asteroid would have been on average 13 times the distance from the moon at its closest. However, the celestial body will move at a staggering speed of more than 26,800 miles per hour. The close encounter will occur on March 4 at around 3am ET (1:30pm IST).
An astronomer at the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy captured an image of the asteroid heading towards us on January 30. Gianluca Masi, the astronomer, found the object using telescope placed on Earth when it was about 35 million km away.
In the image shared on website of the Virtual Telescope Project, the asteroid can be seen as a small white dot marked by an arrow in the center. It was captured in a single exposure of 420 seconds, photographed from a distance with the “Elena”, a robotic telescope unit.
ONE report Newsweek reported that the asteroid completes one orbit of the Sun in 384 days, a little more than what Earth takes to go around the Sun. Classifying an asteroid as “potentially dangerous” does not mean it could hit us. It means it is likely to get very close to us. The classification also takes into account the size of the asteroid. Last month, another asteroid came relatively close to Earth. Summon 7482 (1994 PC1)it is more than 1 km wide and passed by Earth on January 18.
Although no impact threat from an asteroid has been detected to date, NASA is working to build capacity to deal with such a situation should it happen in the future. It launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission Crash the spacecraft into an asteroid to give it a jolt to change its orbit. The accident did not happen before September-October 2022.
