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No this is not a test! An Asteroid is on a collision course path headed to Earth!
It sounds like a plot from a 2000s blockbuster film, right? But this is very much not the case! Sorry, Aerosmith, we don't need another end-of-the-world love ballet song for the soundtrack to Liv Tyler making out with Ben Affleck. I'm sorry, but if I had a daughter, its soundtrack would be more like a Limb Bizkit "Break Stuff" song because I would be cracking ol' Ben over the head for feeling up my daughter. But back to the story at hand:
An asteroid is expected to pass close to Earth soon, within a distance comparable to the moon's orbit. Some people believe that the possibility of an asteroid collision with Earth is higher and more hazardous than commonly believed. However, experts have confirmed that this asteroid will not collide with Earth. Even when objects come closer to Earth than this asteroid, they usually burn up in the atmosphere.
The asteroid, named 2023 HV5, is classified as a near-earth object and will pass by our planet at a distance of approximately 262,790 miles. NEOs are objects that come within 30 million miles of Earth, and so far, NASA has identified around 31,000 of them. However, the asteroid is not large enough to be classified as "potentially hazardous" by NASA.
The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA has estimated that the probability of a collision with the asteroid is 0.00024. If the asteroid were much larger, such as the size of a skyscraper, it could pose more of a threat. However, the asteroid is not nearly large enough to pose a danger. To be classified as a dinosaur event, an object must be over 460 feet in diameter and projected to come within 4.6 million miles of Earth. Currently, there are around 2,300 potentially hazardous objects that have been identified.
While the possibility of an asteroid swarm is a more threatening scenario, it is not expected to happen in the near future. Scientists now have more advanced tools to detect and deflect any object that could pose a danger to Earth. The recent DART mission is an example of this. By crashing a satellite into the asteroid's surface, the mission successfully altered its course, providing greater reassurance to people.
During the recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, a satellite crashed into an asteroid, resulting in an impact that reduced the asteroid's orbit time by 32 minutes. The success of the project exceeded the test's minimum benchmark by more than 25 times, making it a significant achievement. Altering the course of such objects is the best way to avoid a catastrophe. Bruce Willis can rest assured that he won't have to man a suicide missile any time soon. The cowboy hero who saves the world is a thing of the past, I guess, or better left to the movies!
