A SCHOOLBUS-SIZED asteroid has made a very close approach to Earth Thursday night, according to space object trackers.
Astronomers only spotted the near-Earth space rock 2022 GN1 a few days ahead of its head-turning flyby on Tuesday evening.
Nasa has logged the 16-meter-long mass on its “close approach” online database, though it poses no danger to our planet.
The asteroid soared past at a safe distance of around 79,000 miles (127,000 km).
That may sound like a considerable gap but is remarkably close in space terms, as it is around a third of the space between Earth and the Moon.
The Virtual Telescope Project, a set of robotic scopes in Italy, has announced that it will live stream Wednesday’s flyby on its website.
The live feed kicked off at 9pm ET on Tuesday.
Please read our Asteroid 2022 GN1 ‘close approach’ live blog for the latest news and updates…
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Asteroid is now closer
The asteroid is now reportedly less than 150,000 kilometers away from Earth.
The object is soaring its way past the planet tonight.
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Asteroid approaches
The asteroid is about 150,000 kilometers away, as of 9.11pm ET Monday night.
The Virtual Telescope Project reminds that the asteroid is not a threat to Earth.
To learn more about the asteroid as it approaches, watch the live stream.
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Asteroid expected to pass at any moment
Asteroid 2022 GN1, a space rock the size of a bus is expected to pass Earth at any moment.
It is expected to pass within 79,000 miles of the planet, and has been categorized as “potentially hazardous” by the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
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Youngest asteroids ever found in Solar System
Researchers have found a pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun that was formed under 300 years ago.
Details of the Astronomical discovery were published in a report in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The twin asteroids – dubbed 2019 PR2 and 2019 QR6 – are the youngest found in our solar system.
“It’s very exciting to find such a young asteroid pair that was formed only about 300 years ago, which was like this morning – not even yesterday – in astronomical timescales,” astronomer Petr Fatka of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences said.
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Even small asteroids can be dangerous, continued
Around 1,600 people were injured when that asteroid exploded, mostly as a result of broken glass from windows, according to NASA as cited by Newsweek.
The agency’s planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said it was a “cosmic wake-up call.”
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Even small asteroids can be dangerous
In February 2013, an asteroid that NASA previously described as “house-sized,” so relatively small next to Asteroid 2015 DR215, exploded in the skies, Newsweek noted.
It exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk after it entered Earth’s atmosphere at around 40,000 miles per hour, and released a shock wave that obliterated windows over 200 square miles when it exploded.
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Difference between asteroids, meteors, and comets, part three
Like asteroids, a comet orbits the Sun.
However, rather than being made mostly of rock, a comet contains lots of ice and gas, which can result in amazing tails forming behind them as a result of the ice and dust vaporizing.
“They range from a few miles to tens of miles wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet,” Nasa reported.
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Difference between asteroids, meteors, and comets, continued
When two asteroids hit each other, the small chunks that break off are called meteoroids.
“Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as ‘space rocks,’” Nasa reported.
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Difference between asteroids, meteors, and comets
An asteroid is a small rocky body that orbits the Sun.
They are “rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago,” Nasa reveals.
Most are found in the asteroid belt (between Mars and Jupiter).
But they can be found anywhere, including in a path that can impact Earth.
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How to watch the livestream
The live video of the asteroid will be streamed on the Virtual Telescope Project’s WebTV page, starting at 9pm ET tonight.
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How are asteroids named?
A provisional designation is given to a freshly found asteroid that consists of the year of discovery and an alphanumeric number denoting the half-month of finding and the sequence within that half-month.
Once the orbit of an asteroid has been established, it is assigned a number and, in certain cases, a name, according to Open.edu.
When a name is repeated in running text, it is typical to omit the number entirely or to drop it after the first mention.
In addition, the discoverer of the asteroid can suggest a name within the International Astronomical Union’s standards.
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‘Very close, but safe’
Astronomer Gianluca Masi described the asteroid’s upcoming approach as “very close, but safe.”
Masi is the manager of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.
Masi will record the video of the asteroid tonight via telescope.
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What is considered a ‘close approach’?
If an asteroid comes within 4.65million miles of Earth and is over a certain size, it is considered “potentially hazardous” by cautious space agencies.
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Saving Earth from asteroids, continued
Nasa said: “DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”
The DART craft should hit a small asteroid called Dimorphos in September with the ultimate aim of moving it off course.
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Saving Earth from asteroids
Some experts are worried that Earth isn’t yet ready to defend itself from potentially deadly asteroids.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once sparked concern when he tweeted: “a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense.”
Nasa is looking into having some defense methods set up, however.
It recently launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.
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Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part four
Previously, scientists had to manually do calculations to try and work out the Yarkovsky effect and its impact on an asteroid’s path.
The hope is that the software can also help Nasa spot any potentially hazardous asteroids it may have missed.
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Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part three
The Sentry-II software will finally let scientists take the Yarkovsky effect into account when they’re trying to figure out if an asteroid is going to hit Earth.
This was something the original software, called Sentry, couldn’t do.
Davide Farnocchia, a JPL navigation engineer, said: “The fact that Sentry couldn’t automatically handle the Yarkovsky effect was a limitation.”
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Nasa upgrades asteroid software, continued
Nasa will be upgrading its 20-year-old software with a new algorithm called Sentry-II, which will periodically scan a table of known potentially hazardous asteroids and their orbits.
Sentry-II will then calculate if any of the asteroids on the table or added to the table have a risk of hitting Earth.
The new system will be taking into account something called the Yarkovsky effect, which refers to when an asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits it as heat.
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Nasa upgrades asteroid software
NASA has upgraded its asteroid hazard software to better detect potentially dangerous space rocks.
The US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uses a special type of software to assess potentially hazardous asteroids that could slam into Earth.
There’s no known imminent “doomsday asteroid” on its way but astronomers check the sky often just as a precaution.
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The probability of a collision
In a statement about the probability of collisions with Earth, Nasa wrote that it, “knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small.”
“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
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NEO mission
Nasa is hoping to launch its Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission in 2026.
If the agency does so, it will finally have a spacecraft dedicated only to hunting asteroids.
The hope is that the NEO Surveyor craft will find 90 percent of asteroids that are 460 feet or larger within the first decade of its mission.
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What is a NEO?
Nasa considers anything passing near Earth’s orbit a Near-Earth Object (NEO).
Thousands of NEOs are tracked by scientists to monitor whether they’re on a collision course with our planet.
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Nasa monitors thousands of asteroids
Nasa has its eye on nearly 28,000 known near-Earth asteroids, and discoveries of new asteroids are said to go up by their thousands each year.
On that note, Nasa is hoping to launch its Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission in 2026.
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What is 2022 GQ1 like?
2022 GQ1 is estimated to be between 22 and 50 feet in diameter.
The asteroid is expected to be hurtling past Earth at about 17,400 miles per hour
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Another close call
As of Tuesday morning, only one other asteroid will come as close to earth as 2022 GN1 in the next two months — the rest of the space rocks will be further away than the moon, according to Nasa.
The other asteroid cutting it close is named 2022 GQ1.
2022 GQ1 is expected to fly past Earth just after 7am on Thursday, April 7.
