February 14, 2025
'Potentially hazardous' asteroid to fly past Earth tomorrow: How to watch for it

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Top Line

An asteroid the size of a football stadium will fly past Earth on Friday, and because of its size and how close it is coming to Earth, NASA scientists are monitoring it for any potential threats.

important facts

An 890-foot asteroid will fly past Earth on Friday, coming within 1.7 million miles of the planet — about seven times further than the Moon — and traveling at about 11 miles per second, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid, called Asteroid 2008 OS7, orbits the Sun every 962 days, so its next return will be in 2026, although its next close approach won’t be until 2037, when it will come within 10 million miles of Earth.

NASA labels objects that come within 4.6 million miles of Earth and are larger than 150 meters as “potentially hazardous objects”, so NASA is monitoring its potential threat.

It is expected to pass Earth around 9:41 a.m. EST on Friday, and although it will not be visible to the naked eye, NASA offers a Virtual Asteroid Tracker and Virtual Telescope to view asteroids in the solar system in real time . The project will livestream the event.

big number

1,303,867. NASA estimates how many asteroids there are in the solar system.

main background

According to NASA, asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun like planets, although they are much smaller. They are formed from leftovers from when the Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Asteroid 2008 OS7 is one of the 18,232 Apollo-class asteroids, which are asteroids that can enter Earth’s orbit. NASA has taken the threat of an asteroid approaching Earth more seriously in recent years. In 2022, it conducted its first double asteroid deflection test, which changed the orbit of an asteroid. NASA launches a spacecraft into space and hits the asteroid, shortening its orbit by 32 minutes. NASA sent the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a mission to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu to study it. The spacecraft collected samples of the asteroid and returned them to Earth in September 2023, although the findings have not yet been made public. Scientists believe that Bennu is likely to hit Earth in 2182, that is why research is being done on the asteroid. According to a 2023 paper published in Icarus, scientists on the OSIRIS-REx mission believe Bennu has a 1 in 2,700 chance of colliding with the Texas-sized chunk of Earth in 2182.

tangent line

Asteroid 2008 OS7 is not the only asteroid to pass by Earth tomorrow, two others will also pass by Earth. Asteroid 2024 BJ3, which was discovered this year, is a 70-foot, airplane-shaped asteroid that is passing by. It will come within 533,000 miles of Earth – much closer than 2008 OS7. Asteroid 2024 BP1 is also airplane-shaped, although it is slightly larger at 170 feet. 2024 BP1 will pass farthest from Earth, at a distance of 2.1 million miles.

Further reading

NASA scientists calculated the exact date that an asteroid could hit the Earth with the force of at least 24 nuclear bombs. Thankfully, it’s very far away. (business Insider)

The Next Five Asteroid Approaches (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

‘Wolf Moon’ to rise this week: Here’s when the first full moon of the year will be seen (Forbes)

Source: www.forbes.com

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