Nasa recently launched a mission to deliberately crash a spaceship onto an asteroid as a test to prevent a giant space rock from wiping out life on Earth.
A skyscraper-sized asteroid will pass the Earth at a distance of 3,480,000 miles on January 11. The asteroid, named Asteroid 2013 YD48 by Nasa, is larger than big ben. Nasa classified the asteroid as a "potentially dangerous object" because of its size and relative proximity to Earth as it passed.
While it will lose Earth over a great distance, Nasa classifies any asteroid or comet as a Near-Earth Object (NEO) if it gets close to 1.3au astronomical units a little more than the distance between Earth and the Sun. One au is the equivalent of 93 million miles. Such a large asteroid could be devastating if it hit Earth, but 2013 YD48 won't be close enough to cause concern.
The most recent asteroid to hit the planet was eight years ago in Russia, which exploded in the atmosphere.
Nasa recently launched a mission to deliberately crash a spaceship onto an asteroid as a test to prevent a giant space rock from wiping out life on Earth. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) took off at 10:21 pm Pacific Time, November 24, 2021, aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The objective of the mission is to deflect Dimorphos, a "small moon" about 525 feet wide that circles a much larger asteroid called Didymos. The spacecraft is expected to hit the asteroid in the fall of 2022, when the binary asteroid system is 11 million kilometers from Earth, roughly the closest point the pair have ever reached.
“What we're trying to learn is how to deflect a threat,” NASA's chief scientist Thomas Zuburchen said ahead of the launch.
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