NASA Reveals Details of Aircraft-Sized Apollo Group Asteroid Buzzing Earth

Space agencies like NASA and ESA closely monitor and name asteroids due to their frequent close encounters with Earth. The process of assigning a temporary name to an asteroid starts when a lone observer spots it on two consecutive nights and reports their findings to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Centre, as per ESA.

The IAU assigns a temporary designation, typically consisting of a serial number, such as “2023 HV5”. The provisional designation includes the year the asteroid was discovered, followed by two letters indicating the order in which it was discovered in that year.

Using its advanced ground and space telescopes and satellites, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office has warned that an asteroid will approach Earth soon.

Asteroid 2022 BS2: Details

This Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on August 11. Although this space rock will come very close to the planet, it is not expected to hit the surface. According to NASA, asteroid 2022 BS2 will pass Earth at a distance of about 6.6 million kilometers.

It is already on its way to the planet and travels at a speed of 29,585 kilometers per hour. Although this asteroid passes very close to Earth, it is not large enough to be called a potentially hazardous asteroid. According to NASA, Asteroid 2022 BS2 is nearly 95 feet across, making it almost the size of an airplane!

The space agency has also revealed that this space rock belongs to Apollo’s group of Near-Earth Asteroids, which are Earth-passing space rocks with semi-major axes larger than Earth’s. These asteroids are named after the huge 1862 Apollo asteroid discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.

NASA’s asteroid tracking technology

NASA tracks asteroids with a combination of ground-based and space-based telescopes. The NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) scans the night sky for moving objects and reports possible asteroid sightings, while some space-based observatories use infrared sensors to detect asteroids and their properties. Some of these include the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the NEOWISE mission.