(ORDO NEWS) — Asteroid 2022 AE1 was discovered on January 6, and a day later the automated system for determining the orbits of asteroids (AstOD) recognized it as potentially dangerous.
This system automatically calculates orbits from asteroid observations provided by telescopes and observatories around the world.
The asteroid was moving so fast that humanity didn’t have enough time to try to hit it and change its trajectory. The European Space Agency (ESA) said that, unfortunately, the likelihood of a collision is increasing.
For several busy January days this year, astronomers tracked a near-Earth object heading towards Earth. Its trajectory indicated that it would collide with the planet in 2023, but it strangely changed course.
The asteroid was on its way to Earth, and astronomers had already predicted massive damage from its collision on July 4, 2023. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the asteroid was moving very fast.
After seven days of observations, the probability of a collision with the Earth has increased. The first sightings were followed by a dramatic week when the Moon obscured the dangerous object and no one knows what happened to it.
When the Moon opened up, the telescope showed that the likelihood of a collision had dropped dramatically. After that, it was confirmed that 2022 AE1 will not collide with the Earth, and it was removed from the ESA list of hazardous objects.
According to astronomers, asteroid 2022 AE1 will pass from the Earth at a distance of about ten million kilometers, which is almost 20 times the distance to the Moon.
However, the very fact of such a sharp change in the asteroid’s flight path remains strange. What or who influenced him remains a mystery.
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