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An asteroid that has been dubbed 2024 LV2 will come worryingly close to Earth today. US space agency NASA has provided details including the scary speeds it is travelling at.
A scarily big asteroid is expected to come very close to Earth Nasa reports.
A massive asteroid is all set to make its close approach to the Earth today, US space agency NASA has warned. This is a 240-foot asteroid that is flying at astonishing speed towards the planet and a close eye is being kept on it to see if it carries any potential for straying from its current orbit. This space rock that has been named Asteroid 2024 LV2 is speeding along at a terrifying 28.23 km per second!
The asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 2,930,000 miles. If it does not deviate, it is expected to fly by back into the depths of the solar system. However, sometimes asteroids are affected by the gravitational pulls of nearby planetary bodies and do deviate from their paths. That can also happen if they are hit by some other body flying out there.
Notably, the biggest planet in the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter, is known to exert so much gravitational pressure on other space bodies like asteroids, that it even causes them to shift away from their original orbits. According to one theory, that is exactly what happened to the asteroid over 66 mn years ago that crashed into Earth, exterminated the dinosaurs and laid the foundation for the emergence of mammals, including humanity, who now dominate the planet. That asteroid was estimated to be anywhere between 10 to 15 km in diameter.
While the chances of an asteroid impacting Earth are remote, the threat is very real and that is why space agencies like NASA have so many instruments deployed on Earth and in space to keep an eye on them. In fact, Nasa is tracking thousands of asteroids on a daily basis. It has also devised various ways to ensure that any rogue asteroid that threatens to crash on Earth can be deflected away. One of the tests that tried this out was called DART or double asteroid redirection test. It involved two asteroids tumbling in close conjunction and Nasa crashed its spacecraft at high speed to make it deviate from its path. Didymos was the larger asteroid and Dimorphos was its moonlet. Nasa spacecraft was crashed into the moonlet, ensuring both deviated from their earlier orbit.
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