Posted on 04/26/2022 9:42:52 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The asteroid, named 418135 (2008 AG33), has an estimated diameter between 1,150 and 2,560 feet (350 to 780 meters) and will break into Earth's orbit at a blistering 23,300 mph (37,400 km/h). Thankfully, the asteroid is expected to skim past our planet without any risk of impact.
At its closest point, the asteroid — traveling at more than 30 times the speed of sound — will come within about 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) of Earth, which is roughly eight times the average distance between Earth and the moon. This may sound like a big gap, but by cosmic standards, it's actually a stone's throw away.
NASA flags any space object that comes within 120 million miles (193 million km) of Earth as a "near-Earth object" and any fast-moving object within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) as "potentially hazardous." Once the objects are flagged, astronomers closely monitor them, looking for any deviation from their predicted trajectory that could put them on a collision course with Earth.
The incoming space rock was first discovered on Jan. 12, 2008, by asteroid surveyors at the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter observatory in Arizona and last zipped past Earth on March 1, 2015, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The asteroid swings by our planet roughly every seven years, with the next close flyby predicted to come on May 25, 2029.
Thursday's asteroid might not even be the biggest space rock to hurtle past us in the coming weeks. That title will likely go to 467460 (2006 JF42), which has an estimated diameter between 1,247 and 2,822 feet (380 to 860 m) and will be traveling at roughly 25,300 mph (40,700 km/h) when it passes us on May 9, 2022.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
The first spacefarer to snag one of these things is gonna be a trillionaire over night. That will be the real space race.
Well, we can’t call up Bruce Willis, he’s got brain issues.
I have a number of potential sites I’d like it to consider impacting.
That makes 89,273 asteroids that just missed us since we were young, so party on.
Even so, sooner or later, one of these is going to AG)090jiov sk O> .. c
(ah sh*t)
2,000,000 miles from earth. Oooh, that’s just so damn close!
Metric conversions really slow down this article. Go Imperial.
8.4 lunar distances from earth.
Like when a mosquito snags an automobile.
Yup. More metal than has been mined in the history of mankind. The fact that we haven't even plans for asteroid mining is disappointing.
It is a difficult prospect.
When these articles post about an asteroid coming near earth, they put it in such terms as this one: “roughly eight times the average distance between Earth and the moon.”
The trick will be to use the moon’s gravity to capture it, without having it land on people’s heads here on earth. I’m wondering if it’s possible to transfer a moon-orbiting satellite asteroid into an earth-orbiting satellite asteroid with a nudge here and there.
Ben. “2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers)” selling newspapers! (But you knew that!)
Someday, however....
Just the issue of altering its trajectory accurately, when the object is not a uniform shape is a pretty large.You're talking about applying rather large delta-v to a very massive object. You definitely do not want it in Earth orbit, especially the debris you'd generate in a mining operation LEO is already cluttered enough with garbage. I wouldn't even want to do it in a lunar orbit. We'd need to mine them in the belt. This has been endlessly discussed in various sci-fi, a small percentage of which actually discuss the serious challenges inherent that.
Eventually some smart folks are going to work it out, and will become the richest people who have ever lived.
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