Two large asteroids safely pass Earth just 42 hours apart – Phys.org Achi-News

Two large asteroids will safely pass Earth this week, a rare event perfectly timed to commemorate this year’s Asteroid Day.

Neither pose any risk to our planet, but one was only discovered a week ago, highlighting the need to continue to improve our ability to detect potentially dangerous objects in our cosmic neighborhood.

2024 MK – less than two weeks between discovery and flight

Asteroid 2024 MK is between 120 and 260 m in size and was discovered on 16 June 2024. The asteroid will fly past Earth on 29 June during the height of this year’s Asteroid Day activities.

2024 MK is large for a near-Earth object (NEO) and will pass within 290 000 km of the Earth’s surface – about 75% of the distance between the Earth and the moon.

There is no risk of 2024 MK impacting Earth. However, an asteroid of this size would cause significant damage if it did, so its discovery just a week before it flew past our planet highlights the continuing need to improve our ability to detect and monitor objects and potentially dangerous near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Because of its size and proximity, 2024 MK will be visible in a clear dark sky on June 29 using a small telescope or good binoculars for amateur astronomers in some parts of the world. Plan your observations using ESA’s NEO toolkit.

(415029) 2011 UL21 – more than 99% of near-Earth asteroids

Asteroid (415029) 2011 UL21 has the most visitors of the week. At 2310 m across, this asteroid is larger than 99% of all known near-Earth objects (NEOs). However, it will not come anywhere near as close to Earth. At its closest point on June 27, it will still be more than 17 times as far away as the moon.

This asteroid’s orbit around the sun is steeply inclined, which is unusual for such a large object. Most large objects in the solar system, including planets and asteroids, orbit the sun in or near the equatorial plane.

This could be the result of gravitational interaction with a large planet like Jupiter. Jupiter can deflect previously safe asteroids towards Earth, so understanding this process is important.

(415029) 2011 UL21 is in ’11:34 resonance’ with Earth. It completes 11 revolutions about the sun in almost the same amount of time as the Earth completes 34 revolutions (ie 34 years).

The result is a pleasing repeating pattern when you visualize the position of the asteroid relative to Earth over a period of 34 years while keeping the Earth fixed in place.

Asteroid Day 2024

The impact craters that scar the Earth’s surface are testimony to how asteroids have greatly influenced the history and development of our planet.

The UN-sanctioned Asteroid Day commemorates the largest asteroid strike seen in recorded history – the 1908 aerial explosion above Tunguska in largely uninhabited Siberia, which felled around 80 million trees.

This represented a lucky escape for Europe: it happened only a short rotation of the Earth away from affecting the more populated regions of the continent.

ESA is in a unique position, with the cooperation and support of its Member States, to coordinate the data, knowledge and expertise needed to understand and respond to asteroid hazards in Europe and participate in humanity’s wider planetary defense efforts.

Over the past two decades, ESA has been performing the detection and analysis of potentially dangerous NEOs. An estimated 5 million NEOs are larger than 20 m – the threshold above which an impact could cause damage on the ground.

ESA increases asteroid activities

ESA’s Planetary Defense Office runs a number of projects dedicated to improving our ability to detect, track and mitigate potentially dangerous asteroids.

Launching later this year, ESA’s Hera mission is part of the world’s first asteroid deflection test. Hera will conduct a detailed post-impact survey of the asteroid Dimorphos following the impact of NASA’s DART mission in September 2022 and help turn the experiment into a well-understood and repeatable planetary defense technique. Members of the Hera team will be taking part in the Asteroid Day celebrations later this week.

Back on Earth, ESA is developing a network of insect-inspired Flyeye telescopes that will use their uniquely wide field of view to automatically scan the entire sky each night in search of new potentially dangerous asteroids .

Our future NEOMIR satellite will be located between the Earth and the sun. It will use infrared light to spot asteroids approaching our planet from parts of the sky that cannot be seen from earth as they are obscured by the glare of our star.

Meanwhile, the Office of Planetary Defense continues to keep a close eye on today’s skies. ESA’s fireball camera in Cáceres, Spain captured a stunning meteor during the night of 18-19 May 2024, believed to be a small fragment of a comet that flew over Spain and Portugal traveling at around 162,000 km/h before burning up. over the Atlantic Ocean.

A few weeks later, on 6 June 2024, the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, USA discovered a small asteroid 2-4 m in size which triggered a warning from ESA’s upcoming impact monitoring system (Meerkat).

That warning was not about impact, but about a very close call. A few hours later, the object flew over the Catalina Sky Survey telescope which found a distance of only 1750 km, making it the second closest pass ever of a known non-impacting asteroid.