(ORDO NEWS) — Earth safely missed asteroid 2005 YY128. It is also 199145. Early in the morning of February 16, 2023, a kilometer-long block flew at a distance of 4.6 million kilometers. That is, it was 12 times farther from us than the Moon.
The asteroid flies in the vicinity of the Earth, approaching it returns approximately every 2 years. But in the foreseeable hundred years, its collision with our planet is not expected. And so far no one has looked.
Options are possible, as they say. Therefore, the heavenly guest is considered potentially dangerous. Among these – PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) – astronomers rank all asteroids larger than 100 meters flying closer to the Earth than 19.5 distances from it to the Moon (LD).
2005 YY128 more than covers all these indicators. By the way, specialists have not yet specified its dimensions – a diameter of about a kilometer is a very conditional estimate. According to some reports, the asteroid may be one and a half kilometers long.
Worse than the other – situations where asteroids are approaching covertly. And remain invisible until the very last moment. Which, at one fine moment, pardon the pun, may be the last in the history of mankind. Lumps can be huge.
Astronomers admit that all systems of planetary protection, designed to warn of imminent danger in time, now and then do not warn. They screw up, to put it simply.
The brightest and loudest example is the Chelyabinsk meteorite, the 10th anniversary of whose visit was recently commemorated by astronomers around the world. A block the size of a tram crept up unnoticed – no one saw until it boomed like 35 heavy bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
A fresher example: the asteroid 2021 S, which was noticed on September 17, 2021 only a day after it was at a minimum distance from our Earth.
Sam Paul Chodas (Paul Chodas) – director of NASA‘s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) admitted that his “department” went wrong.
What is the reason for the failures? Mainly in the fact that invisible asteroids flew up from the side of the Sun, from which the telescopes “blind”. While mankind was simply lucky – the “missed” asteroids turned out to be either small or flew by. Or both.
The record holder among those who missed in 2020 was the asteroid 2020 VT4. A little over 10 meters in size, it swept just 380 kilometers from the Earth’s surface.
Could shoot down the International Space Station (ISS), which flies at altitudes from 340 to 430 kilometers. But he didn’t. The ISS then sailed over the South Atlantic.
Alas, humanity will remain completely defenseless – in the sense of discovering space invisibles – at least until 2026.
By this time, NASA, if nothing interferes, plans to place the NEO Surveyor infrared space telescope in orbit, capable of “seeing” potentially dangerous asteroids from a distance of several tens of millions of kilometers – day and night, and, most importantly, against the Sun.
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