UNITED STATES: Asteroids appear to be resuming their perilously close approaches to Earth. NASA keeps track of these asteroids by analysing data from observatories and telescopes such as Pan-STARRS, the Catalina Sky Survey, and the NEOWISE telescope.
While the majority of this apparatus is anchored to the ground, some of it is located in the air.
The Planetary Defense Coordination Office of NASA has issued alerts for the asteroid 2019 OR1.
On November 21, the 770-foot asteroid is expected to make a close approach to Earth at a distance of 4.3 million kilometres.
The asteroid is already travelling at an incredible speed of 48,168 km/h towards the Earth.
Although it is not expected that this asteroid will collide with Earth, even a slight deviation in its path caused by contact with the planet’s gravitational field might cause catastrophic changes in its course.
The Planetary Science Division at NASA’s headquarters office in Washington has established a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which it is in charge of.
The PDCO is responsible for the timely identification of potentially hazardous objects (PHOS), such as asteroids and comets, whose trajectories are predicted to bring them within 0.05 astronomical units (5 million miles or 8 million kilometres) of Earth.
The DART project, which used orbit to combat such threats, has recently been completed by NASA.
NASA’s Dart project set out to determine whether it was possible to change an asteroid’s trajectory. With the success of this test, the world made its first progress in creating the technology required to prevent any huge asteroid from colliding with Earth.
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