Asteroid to Make Historic Close Flyby of Earth at 60364 kmph Today

On September 8, 2016, NASA successfully launched the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft. The purpose of this mission is to study a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) named Bennu, which poses a 1/2700 chance of colliding with Earth between 2175 and 2195. After a mission lasting almost 6 years, which involved landing on Bennu and collecting rock and dust samples, the spacecraft safely returned to Earth on September 24. The collected samples have undergone a process called “nitrogen purge” and will now be transported to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, they will be cataloged and distributed to scientists worldwide.

In separate development work, NASA has also discovered a Near-Earth asteroid whose orbit brings it close to Earth today and it is larger in size than the Chelyabinsk asteroid that injured more than a thousand people! Know the details.

Asteroid 2023 SO5: Details of the close approach

NASA has warned that an asteroid, named Asteroid 2023 SO5, is heading towards Earth and will make its closest approach to the planet today, September 26. Although this space rock will come very close to the planet, it is not expected to affect the surface. This asteroid travels at an amazing speed of 60,364 kilometers per hour and passes the Earth at a distance of 4.9 million kilometers.

Despite its close approach and breakneck speed, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has not classified this asteroid as a potentially hazardous object due to its relatively small size. This is only done for celestial bodies longer than about 490 meters, which can approach the Earth within a radius of 7.5 million kilometers.

According to NASA, Asteroid 2023 SO5 is almost the size of an airplane, measuring nearly 74 feet across! It is part of the Apollo asteroid group, a group of near-Earth asteroids named after the 1862 Apollo asteroid discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.

Other details

NASA has also revealed that this is the first close approach in the history of Asteroid 2023 SO5. It is not expected to pass Earth very close in the future, although it will come as close as 70 million kilometers on February 21, 2024.

Interestingly, this asteroid has not come close to Earth in its history, and this will be its first close approach. It is not expected to pass Earth after today, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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