Asteroid 2022 ES3 LIVE – Space rock the size of a bus makes close pass to Earth – and telescope lets you watch online

2023 asteroid turns out to be safe

The  earlier this year sent scientists on a roller coaster trip.

Astronomers at Arizona’s Mount Lemmon Observatory detected a 70-meter-wide asteroid on January 6, 2022.

Based on their early observations, this object looked to have a chance of colliding with Earth on its next visit, on July 4, 2023.

Because any ambiguities in an asteroid’s orbit are greatest in the hours following its discovery, astronomers from a variety of observatories hurried to perform follow-up observations, which normally rule out any future collisions.

Asteroids approaching: 2022 EZ1

Amor-group Asteroid 2022 EZ1 flew near Earth around 4:30am on Sunday, after being studied for only four days before.

The 51-foot object approached Earth from 4.55million miles away and is set to orbit nearby again in 875 days.

Asteroids approaching: 2022 EM

This giant Apollo-class asteroid approached Earth on Sunday morning around 9:00am, which is exactly what was predicted.

2022 EM flew past Earth at a distance of 4.41million miles.

Asteroids approaching: 2022 DT3

2022 DT3 flew past Earth on Saturday night around 9.30pm at almost 12 miles per second.

The 71-foot long asteroid was about 2.33million miles away from Earth.

Asteroids approaching: 2022 DO1

2022 DO1 approached Earth Saturday night around 9:40pm.

The celestial object is about 48-feet in size, and it came within 1.57million miles of Earth.

Asteroids approaching: 2020 DC

First observed on February 16, this small body is approximately 51 feet in size.

On Sunday morning around 4:00am, the Apollo-class Asteroid approached the Earth as its orbit crosses the Earth's orbit, but it's not considered potentially hazardous.

The house-sized body came 924,000 miles away from Earth.

What is considered a 'close approach'?

If an asteroid comes within 4.65million miles of Earth and is over a certain size, it is considered "potentially hazardous" by cautious space agencies.

Friday's upcoming large asteroid fits this description.

The asteroid should shoot past from its safe distance at a speed of just under 19,000 miles per hour.

How big was Asteroid 2015 DR215?

At up to 1,607 feet wide, the asteroid is larger than the Empire State Building.

New York's most iconic building stands at 1,454 feet tall.

Where are asteroids found?

Asteroids are  in three areas of the solar system.

The majority of asteroids are found in a large ring between Mars and Jupiter’s orbits.

More than 200 asteroids bigger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter are found in this primary asteroid belt.

According to NASA, the asteroid belt includes between 1.1million and 1.9million asteroids bigger than one kilometer (3,281 feet) in diameter, as well as millions of smaller ones.

How are asteroids found, continued

NASA has been leading a program to find and track near-Earth asteroids since around 2000.

According to , programs like the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona and the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii specialize in locating asteroids and have identified hundreds of them.

How are asteroids found?

Giuseppe Piazzi, an Italian priest and astronomer,  Ceres, the first and biggest asteroid, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, while drawing a star map in 1801.

Ceres, while being categorized as a dwarf planet today, is responsible for a quarter of the mass of all known asteroids in or around the main asteroid belt.

Did an asteroid kill the dinosaurs?

The extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid impact, according to a team of scientists who were evaluating whether the newer theory that volcanoes led to their demise was accurate.

The researchers used a variety of methods to assess ancient temperature records and the amount of greenhouse gases that could have been in the atmosphere.

According to the study results, volcanic gasses may have also played a role in the decline of the dinosaurs.

Types of asteroids- M-types

The M-types (nickel-iron): are made of metal. The compositional variations between asteroids are linked to how distant they originated from the Sun. After they formed and partially melted, some endured tremendous temperatures, with iron sinking to the center and driving basaltic (volcanic) lava to the surface.

Types of asteroids- S-types

• The S-types (stony) asteroids are made up of nickel-iron silicate minerals.

Types of asteroids- C-Type

C-Type (chondrite) are the most common asteroids. They are most likely made up of clay and silicate rocks and have a black look. They are among the solar system’s oldest ancient things.

Even small asteroids can be dangerous, continued

Around 1,600 people were injured when that asteroid exploded, mostly as a result of broken glass from windows, according to NASA as cited by Newsweek.

The agency's planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said it was a "cosmic wake-up call."

Even small asteroids can be dangerous

In February 2013, an asteroid that NASA previously described as "house-sized," so relatively small next to Asteroid 2015 DR215, exploded in the skies,  noted.

It exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk after it entered Earth's atmosphere at around 40,000 miles per hour, and released a shock wave that obliterated windows over 200 square miles when it exploded.

Threatening space objects, continued

"We believe anything larger than one to two kilometers (one kilometer is a little more than one-half mile) could have worldwide effects," Nasa's site continued.

Just for reference, a standard 65 seat American school bus is about 35 feet long.

That means an asteroid smaller than a school bus could still be deadly depending on where it hit.

But for an asteroid to be "potentially hazardous," it also has to meet other criteria.

Threatening space objects

Nasa's  explains that when it comes to potentially dangerous asteroids, "Only once every few million years, an object large enough to threaten Earth's civilization comes along."

"Impact craters on Earth, the moon and other planetary bodies are evidence of these occurrences."

"Space rocks smaller than about 25 meters (about 82 feet) will most likely burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere and cause little or no damage."

"If a rocky meteoroid larger than 25 meters but smaller than one kilometer ( a little more than 1/2 mile) were to hit Earth, it would likely cause local damage to the impact area."

Infrared telescope to launch in 2026

NEO Surveyor, a space-based infrared  devoted to locating potentially deadly asteroids, , thanks to  from Congress in 2018.

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part four

Previously, scientists had to manually do calculations to try and work out the Yarkovsky effect and its impact on an asteroid's path.

The hope is that the software can also help Nasa spot any potentially hazardous asteroids it may have missed.

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, part three

The Sentry-II software will finally let scientists take the Yarkovsky effect into account when they're trying to figure out if an asteroid is going to hit Earth.

This was something the original software, called Sentry, couldn't do.

Davide Farnocchia, a JPL navigation engineer, said: "The fact that Sentry couldn't automatically handle the Yarkovsky effect was a limitation."

Nasa upgrades asteroid software, continued

Nasa will be upgrading its 20-year-old software with a new algorithm called Sentry-II, which will periodically scan a table of known potentially hazardous asteroids and their orbits.

Sentry-II will then calculate if any of the asteroids on the table or added to the table have a risk of hitting Earth.

The new system will be taking into account something called the Yarkovsky effect, which refers to when an asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits it as heat.

Nasa upgrades asteroid software

Nasa has upgraded its asteroid hazard software to better detect potentially dangerous space rocks.

The US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) uses a special type of software to assess potentially hazardous asteroids that could slam into Earth.

There’s no known imminent “doomsday asteroid” on its way but astronomers check the sky often just as a precaution.

Youngest asteroids ever found in Solar System 

Researchers have found a pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun that was formed under 300 years ago.

Details of the Astronomical discovery were published in a  in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The twin asteroids – dubbed 2019 PR2 and 2019 QR6 – are the youngest found in our solar system.

“It’s very exciting to find such a young  pair that was formed only about 300 years ago, which was like this morning – not even yesterday – in astronomical timescales,” astronomer Petr Fatka of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences said.