NASA has warned that a giant asteroid is poised to make a close approach to the planet today.
Although most asteroids are found in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, known as the asteroid belt, that doesn’t mean they’ve never come close to Earth. In fact, some space rocks have moved towards Earth in the past. Some of these space rocks have even caused major impacts and even caused extinction-level events. One of the major asteroid-related events in history was when an asteroid hit Earth nearly 65 million years ago. It was responsible for causing the extinction of the dinosaurs when it crashed to Earth near the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Although not nearly as dangerous, NASA has warned that another asteroid is on its way to Earth and it is a large asteroid.
Details of asteroid 2014 HK129
A giant 680 feet wide asteroid called Asteroid 2014 HK129 is expected to zoom past Earth today, December 20. In fact, this stadium-sized asteroid is on its way towards Earth, traveling at an amazing speed of 41689 km/h. Asteroid 2014 HK129 is expected to make its closest approach to Earth today at a distance of 2.5 million km.
This asteroid is not expected to collide with Earth. Although you shouldn’t worry because NASA There has been a motion plan to join the planet defense to protect the planet against scammers small planet with the help of its DART Mission.
NASA’s DART Asteroid Mission
NASA’s first attempt to protect the planet against potentially world-destroying asteroids has been successful, the space agency has revealed. The purpose of the Dual Asteroid Detection Test or DART test is to smash a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos to deflect it from its path. According to NASA, Dimorphos takes 11 hours and 55 minutes to orbit the larger asteroid Didymos. Astronomers studied the collision data using various telescopes and revealed that the orbital time was reduced by almost 32 minutes.
The studies were carried out with the help of multiple images captured by the spacecraft’s camera called cubeSAT LICIACube, which is made up of two main components, LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer) and LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging) for Asteroid), both of which collect key data from the collision.
