On February 14, widely celebrated as Valentine’s Day, a massive asteroid will come very close to Earth. The US space agency, NASA, which keeps track of asteroids approaching Earth, confirmed that a giant asteroid will make a very close approach to Earth. This massive space rock called Asteroid 2023 CP will pass by Earth at a distance of just 4.09 million miles, NASA has calculated the approximate size of this asteroid to be about 110 feet, nearly as large. by an airplane. While this seems pretty far away, that’s not much of a distance compared to the vastness of space, hence NASA’s marking it as ‘close approach’.
danger of small planet on valentine’s day
Near-Earth asteroid 2023 CP was discovered on February 8, 2023 and belongs to the Amor group. With an orbital period of 624 days, it makes one complete orbit around the Sun. The asteroid’s aphelion, which is its farthest from Sunlies at a distance of 275 million km, while its perihelion, the closest point to the Sun, is 153 million km away.
The closest approach will occur in the late hours of February 14, around 23:15, sky.org reports. This Valentine’s Day asteroid will move at about 12341 km/h towards Earth. Earth, NASA’s CNEOS agency confirmed. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) designates all space rocks occurring within 4.6 million miles around the Earth and larger than about 150 meters as potentially hazardous objects. . Its close proximity to Earth is what makes this 110-foot asteroid a potential threat.
How NASA tracks asteroids
NASA tracks asteroids using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes. The NASA-funded Asteroid Impacts Final Warning System (ATLAS) scans the night sky for moving objects and reports any possible asteroid detection, while a Some space observatories use infrared sensors to detect asteroids and their characteristics. Some of these include the Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the NEOWISE mission.
