An asteroid named 138971 (2001 CB21) will reportedly pass our planet on March 4. (Credits: Twitter/@Virtual Telescope)
Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, has taken an image of an asteroid accelerating in our direction.
For most of us, the universe and what is going on in it is a relatively unknown and somewhat intimidating phenomenon. Comets and asteroids and their paths are sources of great intrigue to us. Human eyes and lenses are always on the lookout for dangers that may be rushing towards Earth at thousands of miles per hour apart from the wonders of the universe. The potential for this danger was further brought to the fore with the recently released Netflix flick Don’t Look Up, which featured a planet-destroying comet hurtling toward Earth. However, a real-life rendering of the same is currently in progress with a potentially dangerous asteroid heading towards our planet. However, before you start panicking, we will be safe as the asteroid will pass the Earth without any sort of danger. It will be a close shave though. According to a report in Newsweek, Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, has captured an image of an asteroid that is moving in our direction at 26,800 miles per hour.
Asteroid named 138971 (2001 CB21), is reportedly going to pass near our planet on March 4 at 1:30 PM IST. Newsweek reports that the asteroid, about 1.3 km in diameter, takes 384 days to complete one orbit around the Sun. Its sheer size makes it larger than 97 percent of known asteroids. The asteroid is labeled as ‘potentially dangerous’, which does not mean that the asteroid will hit us, but that it will pass close to Earth.
PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) are not uncommon. Asteroid 1994 PC1, which also falls in this category, passed about 1.2 million miles from Earth last month. Again, it was not expected that the asteroid would hit our planet.
Asteroids hitting Earth are a real threat, and NASA is working on initiatives like the Double Asteroid Redirect Test to improve humanity’s ability to deal with an oncoming asteroid. The extinction of the dinosaurs has been attributed to an asteroid impact on our planet millions of years ago.
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