astronomer have discovered a fresh asteroid — just in metre to catch it as it hurtled past us at less than a ten percent of the distance between us and the moon . It ’s the 2nd time that ’s happened in two weeks . What have we done to ira you , distance gods ?
This most recent asteroid , 2016 RB1 , was both slightly diminished and more or less closerthan 2016 QA2 , the other undiscovered asteroidthat brushed by us at the end of August . Still , their specs are reasonably alike . 2016 RB1 measured in at somewhere between 25 - 50 foot andcame by us at a distance of 25,000 miles yesterday . 2016 QA2 was around 50,000 miles aside and measured over 50 feet .
Despite their snug approaches , neither asteroid was really on - course to hit Earth at all . Still , the fact that they are so near — and we had no mind until they were much on our threshold — is a minuscule surprising .
Part of it is due to the classic space problem : Space is very big and it ’s leisurely to miss things even when they are about to vanish right through our arena . The other problem is that it stupefy much harder to predict what asteroid are lead to do once they get closer to us , because of a curious effect of nearing the sun on the paths of asteroids .
asteroid rotate and , as they come closer to the sun , the side close start to heat up . This built up heat can then press the asteroid miles into a unlike and sometimes intemperately - to - predict way of life .
Tonight , NASA is going to be plunge their first mission to capture some dirt from yet another near Earth asteroid , Bennu . But they also hope the trip will give them a chance to get a better melodic theme of how these sunlight - powered thrust , called theYarkovsky burden , work . If they ’re successful , we could get a whole spate better at predicting where nearby asteroid are going to go , before they ’re right next to us .
asteroidsNASAScienceSpace
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