An asteroid flew pretty close to Earth last week . It missed us , you may have observe . But we did n’t recognise it until three day after it had flown past , which is a passably terrific admonisher about the dangers asteroid pose to our man .
Asteroid 2017 001was about 37 to 77 m ( 121 to 252 feet ) across . It come about a third as close as the Moon,123,031 kilometers(76,448 miles ) from our planet , which is a pretty safe distance . It vanish by at some point in the Nox of July 20 at a speed of about 10.36 kilometers ( 6.4 miles ) per second .
However , it was not until July 23 that we spotted the asteroid , after it had perish Earth , thanks to the ATLAS - MLO telescope in Hawaii . That ’s , you know , not great .
“ Asteroid 2017 OO1 is an important monitor that we postulate to do a better job at detecting even small - sized asteroid early , ” Grigorij Richters , the beginner ofAsteroid Daythat seeks to raise awareness about asteroids , separate IFLScience . “ Small asteroids can cause pregnant regional hurt and we are the only species that can do something about this cosmic chance . Just ask the dinosaur ! ”
An animation of asteroid 2017 001 missing Earth . The Watchers
For a bit of comparison , the Chelyabinsk meteor that explode over Russia in 2013 was about 20 meters ( 65 groundwork feet ) across . Thatinjured hundred , and induce considerable damage including shattering window .
In 1908 , the famousTunguska meteor – appraise 50 to 100 meter ( 165 to 330 foot ) across – burst over Siberia . It flattened about 80 million trees over an orbit of 2,000 square kilometers ( 770 square miles ) , although luckily no one was killed . That ’s almost the region of Luxembourg .
We know of about 75 per centum of asteroids larger than 1 kilometre ( 0.6 miles ) in Earth ’s vicinity , deemed as being able to cause quenching effect . More alarmingly , we only experience about 0.5 percent of asteroids smaller than 120 meters ( 390 feet ) . These could cause pretty major harm if they pip Earth .
Asteroid 2017 001 did not hit Earth . However , it should be a pretty unspoiled reminder that we call for to do more to detect asteroids . presently , most of our data comes from NASA ’s WISE telescope in orbit , which has found yard of asteroids since 2009 – but not almost enough .
What would we do if one was coming our fashion ? Well , there are a number of idea , such as using an impactor to slightly convert the flight of one . Sadly , ESAscrapped its involvementin a mission to test this out . Hopefully , the threat will be taken seriously in the future tense . The dinosaurs did n’t have a space program – we do .
