Bus-Sized Asteroid To Approach Earth Thursday; Will It Pose a Threat?

(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/NASA)
Bus-Sized Asteroid To Approach Earth Thursday; Will It Pose a Threat?

A space rock about the size of a bus will make a close flyby to Earth. However, experts said there was no reason to be alarmed.

Bus-Sized Asteroid Approaching Earth

On Thursday (Feb. 22), a recently discovered asteroid the size of a school bus will fly by Earth at a distance closer than our moon, but it shouldn't be a threat to our planet.

The recently discovered asteroid, known as 2024 DW, is roughly 42 feet (13 meters) in diameter and will pass close to Earth on Thursday, traveling within 140,000 miles (225,000 kilometers). That is closer than the moon's usual orbital distance, which is approximately 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) from Earth.

Asteroid 2024 DW is just one of many so-called "potentially hazardous asteroids" that will pass near Earth on Feb. 22. These space rocks have trajectories that send them within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet. It will be the closest, though.

According to a NASA list of the next five asteroid flybys, another bus-sized asteroid will pass at a range of 482,000 miles (775,000 km), while an asteroid the size of a jumbo jet would go by at a comfortable distance of 2.5 million miles (4 million km).

The first discovery of asteroid 2024 DW was made on Feb. 19 by Mt. Lemmon Survey astronomers. The goal of this study is to track near-Earth asteroids that may pose a hazard to Earth as part of the ongoing Catalina Sky study, which tracks near-Earth asteroids that may pose a hazard to Earth based on data from the Minor Planet Center (MPC) of the International Astronomical Union at the Harvard-Smithsonian Carnegie Center the Astrophysics.

ALSO READ: 4,265-Foot Asteroid Could Potentially Crash Into Earth's Orbit Next Week: Report

How Will NASA Alert Us Of Potential Asteroid Collision?

NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office is in charge of locating, tracking, and assessing the risk related to potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system.

The responsibility of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, according to Lead Program Executive Lindley Johnson, is to identify space objects that could pose a hazard to humanity before they even reach Earth. They have a system in place to inform the public in the event of a possible collision.

NASA works with the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN), a global partnership of astronomers, to do this. IAWN has procedures in place to notify the public should a dangerous asteroid get too close to Earth.

To validate their findings and assess the threat, the party members who first detected it would share their observations with the whole IAWN network. NASA would sound an alert as soon as everyone agreed that Earth should be ready for impact.

If the asteroid approached the US, NASA would tell the White House and the government would formally notify the public. If IAWN were big enough to pose a threat to global security, it would notify the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs.

NASA confirms that a massive asteroid will be headed toward Earth in 2029. The government clarified that even if the space rock is large, there won't be a collision because Earth won't be struck by any space rock for at least a few decades.