NASA System Predicts Impact of Small Asteroid
4 July 2022
Asteroids like those that killed dinosaurs 65 million years ago have a low chance of hitting Earth, but they are not zero. If we include asteroids, the more serious asteroids are to hit, the more serious NASA and other organizations are to work on detecting and tracking these objects. On March 11, 2022, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Norwegian Sea and collapsed. But this incident was not a complete surprise. Astronomers knew that the asteroid was on a collision course, accurately predicting where and when it would hit.
Large asteroids at risk
Large asteroids at risk of impact will be discovered at a distance from Earth. The goal of NASA is to track such asteroids and calculate their orbits so that, in the unlikely event of a collision, Who can notify them many years before. However, the actual occurrence of these very small asteroids has given the Planetary Defense community confidence that it is capable and that CNEOS’s collision prediction model is highly capable of providing information to respond to the possibility of larger celestial collisions.
Large asteroids with potential collisions
Large asteroids with potential collisions will be discovered far away from Earth. The goal of NASA is to track such asteroids and calculate their orbits so that, in the unlikely event of a collision, Who can notify them many years ago
2022 EB5 is the fifth asteroid detected in space before entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The first asteroid discovered and tracked before its impact on Earth was the 2008 TC3, which entered the atmosphere over Sudan and split in October 2008.
Thirteen feet wide (4 meters), this asteroid has scattered hundreds of small meteorites in the Nubian Desert. The more accurate the investigation, the more harmless objects will be detected before entering the atmosphere.
Asteroid 2022 EB5 was not dangerously large, but we have only provided five short-term asteroids to track before entering the Earth’s atmosphere. This makes it possible to test NASA’s automatic collision risk assessment system, the Scout. As more and more observatories follow asteroids, the calculations of their trajectory and collision position become more accurate.
