Huge kilometre-wide asteroid to fly past on January 18th
The scheme is designed to “punch” an asteroid off course and is the first demonstration of a “kinetic impactor technique” – essentially a high-powered gun NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies – which is designed to change the motion of said the space rock will pass within 1.2 million an asteroid in space. miles of the Earth, and will travel at an imExperts have said that it is inevitable that an mense speed of 47,344 miles per hour. asteroid will one day enter our atmosphere at some point. The asteroid will reach its closest to Earth at around 9.51pm (GMT) on January 18, When that happens, Professor Alan Duffy, according to CNN. director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute, urged people not to be too curious. It is unlikely the asteroid will be visible with the naked eye, but those lucky enough to have a small telescope should be able to spot He said: “I would say the best advice is, for goodness sake, do not look at this thing. it in the distance. A huge asteroid will reportedly fly past Earth on January 18th in what will be the closest of its kind for the next two centuries.
Experts say the space rock, which is named 7482 (1994 PC1), is not expected to crash into our planet.
“I mean, it‘s going to be hard not to – the brightness of the glare from these objects burning up in the atmosphere.
“That‘s actually what caused a lot of the injuries in Chelyabinsk (a meteor strike in Russia in 2013), people not unreasonably looked up at this enormous burning fireball DART, or Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is in the sky, whose brightness was essentially that of the Sun by the time it finally erupted, a pilot of a new technology to prevent future asteroid collisions such as the type that wiped that caused a lot of retina damage – so make sure you’re not looking right at it.” out the dinosaurs. In November last year, a spacecraft was launched by NASA to crash deliberately into an asteroid for the first time in history.
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