Asteroid 2007 FF1 LIVE – NASA says ‘Hazardous’ space rock makes ‘close approach’ to Earth at 29,800mph

What TESS has found so far

So far, TESS has found nearly 5,000 worlds of all shapes and sizes, including gas giants, Neptune-like ice worlds, and so-called Super-Earths.

A Super-Earth has a mass higher than our planet's below those of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.

The search for alien life

Launched four years ago, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope designed to search for undiscovered worlds.

It's searching an area of sky 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission, in a bid to find candidates that could host alien life.

What are Trojan asteroids?

 are in the same orbit as a bigger planet, but they don't crash because they congregate around two specific spots – L4 and L5 Lagrangian points – in the orbit.

The Sun's and the planet's gravitational pulls are counterbalanced by a trojan's proclivity to fly out of orbit.

The Jupiter trojans are the most numerous of the trojan asteroids.

They are estimated to be as abundant as asteroids in the asteroid belt.

There are trojans on Mars and Neptune, and in 2011, NASA reported the finding of an Earth trojan.

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.

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.

If an asteroid hit the Earth, part three

“So you burn things, kill everything in the ocean, and freeze the Earth, and it goes through about two years of constant winter,” Scharringhausen added.

He doesn’t think that all life on Earth would die after a large asteroid impact since some small creatures survived the asteroid strike that once killed the dinosaurs.

Scharringhausen explained: “Not everything will die. If we’re thinking about people, the way to survive would be to get underground.”

“You could maybe ride it out in a bunker if you’ve got the supplies to make it through that period of winter where you can’t grow any edible food.”

“Maybe the finicky crops that humans like to grow won’t come through it so well, but there’s that seed repository, so if those are well-protected enough, you could get agriculture restarted.”

What would happen if an asteroid hit Earth, continued

Experts think we’d experience fires, shock waves, heat radiation, a large crater, acid rain and giant tsunamis if such an asteroid ended up hitting water.

, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Beloit College, told : “All of the ash from the fires and all of the finer-grain debris from the impact will hang out in the atmosphere for a long time, and we get what’s called an impact winter.”

“It’s going to block the sunlight, and all that ash falling into the ocean acidifies the top layers.”

What would happen if an asteroid hit Earth?

Depending on the size of the space rock, an asteroid impact on the Earth could be an extinction-level event, and researchers have created simulations to see just how bad it could be.

Not all asteroids would mean the end of humanity and, in fact, a space rock would have to be pretty large to kill us all.

If an asteroid the size of the one that likely killed the dinosaurs hit Earth today, things would instantly change due to the force of the impact and its knock-on effect on the environment.

Asteroid-pulverizing system, part three

The professor's PI System is being designed to rocket up to a close asteroid and penetrate it with rods if necessary. Those rods would contain explosives that could be set off and tear the asteroid apart before it hit Earth.

Lubin would like the asteroid chunks to be less than 33 feet in diameter, should such an explosion need to occur.

Those space rocks should then form a cloud of debris that could still hit the Earth, but the hope is that a lot of it would break up in Earth's atmosphere instead.

The effectiveness of the PI System would depend on things like asteroid size and how close it is to Earth at the time of the "pulverizing."

Lubin says his system could even orbit Earth one day and be ready for any surprise doomsday asteroids that have the potential to come our way.

Asteroid-pulverizing system, continued

Prof Lubin thinks it would be our best chance of protecting Earth from a devastating asteroid collision.

According to , the professor previously presented his defense system at the 2021 Planetary Defence Conference and his idea got spotted by Nasa.

He's now a Phase One awardee in the Nasa Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Lubin previously observed: "So far, humanity has been spared large-scale catastrophe as was visited upon our previous tenants, but counting upon being 'lucky' is a poor strategy in the longer term."

We don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs, after all.

Asteroid-pulverizing system

Professor Philip Lubin from the University of California Santa Barbara is making something he calls the PI-Terminal Defense for Humanity.

The PI part stands for "Pulverize It".

A simple explanation of the system is that a rocket with lots of explosive rods would approach a large incoming asteroid and smash it into tiny pieces.

Those small rocky pieces would then rain down on Earth and hopefully burn up in the atmosphere.

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.

Largest asteroids: Interamnia

Interamnia  of 217.5 miles and circles the sun once every 1,950 days, or 5.34 years.

Because of its distance from Earth, it is not believed feasible to investigate Interamnia.

Largest asteroids: Hygeia

With a diameter of 270 miles, .

It is a large asteroid in the main belt, but due to its almost spherical form, it may soon be classified as a dwarf planet.

It will be the tiniest dwarf planet in our solar system if it achieves this status.

The asteroid was discovered in 1849 by astronomer Annibale de Gasparis.

Hygiea’s orbit does not bring it close to Earth, hence it is not considered potentially dangerous.

Largest asteroids: Pallas

 in 1802 and named after the Greek goddess of wisdom.

It has a diameter of around 318 miles and accounts for about 7 percent of the asteroid belt’s total mass.

Pallas’ orbit, unlike those of other asteroids, is severely inclined at 34.8 degrees, making it difficult to analyze.

Largest asteroids: Vesta

Vesta is the  asteroid in the main asteroid belt and the biggest official asteroid.

Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers discovered it in 1807.

Vesta has a diameter of 329 miles and makes up nearly 9 percent of the total mass of all asteroids.

Vesta, like Earth, is spherical and has three layers: crust, mantle, and core.

Largest asteroids: Ceres

Ceres is the  in the belt between Mars and Jupiter and was the first found in 1801, even thought to be a planet at the time.

In the 1850s, it was categorized as an asteroid, but in 2006, it was reclassified as a dwarf planet.

While it is no longer classified as an asteroid, it claims the top rank with a diameter of 580 miles.

Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of corn and harvests, and the term cereal comes from the same root.

Ceres took 1,682 Earth days, or 4.6 years, to complete one round around the sun.

Every nine hours, it completes one rotation around its axis.

What is the current asteroid count?

According to , the current known asteroid count is 1,113,527.

Other recent asteroid approaches

When it comes to other recent asteroid approaches, Asteroid 2022 ES3 passed between the Moon and Earth at around 2.18pm ET on Sunday, March 13,  reported.

And Asteroid 2015 DR215 flew past Earth in the early hours of March 11.