Not one, not two, but three giant asteroids are paying us a holiday visit and their speeds are close to Earth’s. On Christmas Day. Relative to the distances in the universe, that is, there is no reason to panic.
The three asteroids are named 2022 YL1, 2013 YA14, and 2022 TE14, and are estimated to measure between 124 and 278 feet, 167 and 360 feet, and 312 and 689 feet, respectively.
Therefore, the 2022 YL1 is about the same size as the wingspan of a Boeing 777, the 2013 YA14 is about the size of an American football field in scale, and the 2022 TE14 will be about the size of a 50-story building. We will call them asteroids A, B, and C, respectively.
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All three asteroids orbit the Sun and sometimes come close to Earth. Most of the asteroids in the solar system are located in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun Between Mars and Jupiterhere it is thought to be about 1.1 million.
“Asteroids are ‘missing planet fragments’ that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. However, because they are relatively small, asteroids can be disrupted quite easily, so they can develop orbits that cross those of the planets,” UK Space Jay Tate, director of the Conservation Center’s observatory, said before Newsweek.
The asteroids will each pass at 0.01959, 0.00691 and 0.02872 AU from Earth. NASA History of NEO Earth Close Approaches. One astronomical unit equal to the distance between the Earth and the Sun – 93 million miles, means that asteroid A will pass by about 1,820,000 miles, asteroid B 642,000 miles, and asteroid C 2,670,000 miles.
While that sounds pretty far in terms of the Solar System, asteroids come pretty close to Earth: The Moon is only 238,900 miles away, while our closest neighbor Venus is currently 153.6 million miles away.
Most near-Earth asteroids are classified as near-Earth objects, and are designated as such because of how close they are and how large they are. There are about 30,000 NEOs known to us so far, some of which fall into another category called “potentially hazardous” objects. They are also defined as 4.6 million miles from Earth’s orbit measure over 460 feet in diameter.
Therefore, only asteroid C falls into the potentially dangerous category.
“A potentially hazardous designation simply means that over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit could become one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We are not underestimating the possibility of these long-term, multi-century impacts,” NASA Administrator Paul Chodas said. Center for the Study of Near-Earth Objects, said before Newsweek.
Although these Christmas asteroids are close to Earth, it is very unlikely that they, or the thousands of other asteroids in the Solar System, will hit our planet.
“No known asteroid poses a significant risk of impacting Earth within the next 100 years,” says NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
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