Close to presidential elections, there are often calls for the “Sweet Meteor of Death” to intercede before choices must be made.
And there is one asteroid that is attempting to answer the call.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is monitoring a “potentially hazardous” asteroid that is moving past Earth on Tuesday.NASA told Fox News Digital that the rocky object, which has been named 2024 ON, is 350 meters long by 180 meters wide, which roughly equals 1,150 feet by 590 feet – larger than previous estimates.NASA has deemed the asteroid “stadium-sized” and reported it was 621,000 miles away from Earth on Tuesday morning, which is considered relatively close. Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told Fox News Digital that an asteroid of this size coming this close to Earth only happens every five to ten years.
Meanwhile, another asteroid is on a trajectory to be captured by Earth’s orbit temporarily and become a second moon!
This month, Earth will grab itself a second moon in the form of the tiny asteroid 2024 PT5.Unlike the moon, Earth’s primary companion which has accompanied our planet for around 4 billion years, this “new mini-moon” will stick around for just two months before it heads back to its home in an asteroid belt trailing our planet and orbiting the sun.A team of scientists well-versed in the study of so-called “mini-moon events ” identified the forthcoming gravitational capture event. They spotted the peculiar dynamic properties of 2024 PT5 as they routinely monitored newly discovered objects for potentially interesting behavior.
The moon will be small, measuring about 10 meters. The asteroid might have been the result of an impact that occurred on our Moon’s surface long ago.
Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said 2024 PT5 is possibly a piece of ejecta from an impact on the moon, meaning the mini-moon may have originated as a piece of the original moon, according to the New York Times.Mini-moons can come in multiple types, according to research. The first, “temporary captured orbiters,” are long episodes in which bodies perform one or more revolutions around the Earth and can remain in the planet’s orbit for many months, or even years. The second, which includes the upcoming mini-moon, are dubbed “temporary captured flybys,” as they do not complete one revolution and remain in Earth’s orbit for a very short period of time.
With this information in mind, it might be significant if the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cleared the path for innovative space exploration so humanity might have some relocation options when it comes.
Meanwhile, China is planning to conduct its own planetary defense test.
China is planning its first mission to impact an asteroid in the name of planetary defense. The mission will serve a dual purpose: One craft will impact the asteroid while its partner observes the space rock to learn more about the solar system and its formation.The China National Space Administration (CNSA) mission may have already selected its target — the near-Earth object (NEO) 2015 XF261, a nearly 100-foot-wide (30 meters) asteroid.According to the small-body database managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), 2015 XF261 last came relatively close to Earth just this week, on Tuesday (July 9), when it passed within 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) of our planet. The space rock was traveling at around 26,000 mph (42,000 kph), roughly 30 times faster than the speed of sound.
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