NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard has recently announced that Earth will have some close encounters with asteroids in the next few days. Five asteroids are set to approach our planet, with two of them making their closest approaches today. The dashboard provides information on the date of closest approach, approximate object diameter, relative size, and distance from Earth for each encounter. Fortunately, none of the asteroids pose a threat to Earth.
Asteroids are left over from the formation of our solar system, which began around 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed. As most of the material fell to the Centre of the cloud, it formed the sun, while some of the condensing dust became planets. These asteroids are known as “Near Earth Objects” (NEOs), and over 30,000 of them of all sizes have been catalogued in the vicinity of the Earth.
Despite their abundance, NASA reassures that none of the known NEOs poses a threat to Earth for the next 100 years. While a collision with an asteroid could result in a massive disaster, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is constantly monitoring these objects and providing updates on their movements through the Asteroid Watch dashboard.
The upcoming asteroids vary in size, with the smallest being 45-feet and the largest being 150-feet wide. These rocks will make their closest approaches at varying distances from Earth, with the farthest being 5,750,000 km away on April 5. NASA notes that even though the largest asteroid, 2023 FZ3, is the size of an airplane and traveling at a speed of 67,656 kmph, it is not a potentially hazardous threat to Earth.
