Astronomy Picture of the Day - Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids

NASA ^ | 30 Jun, 2023 | Illustration Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

[MtnClimber]

Explanation: Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured here are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. To investigate Earth-saving strategies, NASA successfully tested the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year. Of course, rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes create memorable fireball and meteor displays.

[MtnClimber]

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For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.

[MtnClimber]

[MtnClimber]

Pinging the APOD list.

🪐 🌟 🌌 🍔

[Steely Tom]

Wow, NASA’s gonna ride this pony to budget nirvana.

[Paladin2]

Every day is a kr@p-shoot; for so many reasons.

[DugwayDuke]

Steely Tom wrote: “Wow, NASA’s gonna ride this pony to budget nirvana.”

Why would anyone discourage this spending considering the consequences of an impact.

[ConservativeInPA]

[ConservativeInPA]

Why would anyone discourage this spending considering the consequences of an impact.

Probability.

[dragnet2]

[Rennes Templar]

Well, there’s 8 billion people in the world, and 330,000 die each day.

[occamrzr06]

I’ve been. It’s pretty impressive.

[null and void]

Yeah! It might be worse than the COVID vaccinations!

[dragnet2]

Upon impact, it was probably heard all over the southwest U.S., and shook the ground 700 miles away.

[null and void]

Pam's Purple Spirograph

[Paladin2]

How many are born?

[mabarker1]

Be careful, Chris Christie will think it’s a DOUGHNUT.

[DannyTN]

[Rennes Templar]

700,000 born daily.

[Paladin2]

Thanks.

[Brilliant]

The thing to do is nudge them into some other planet or the sun.