An asteroid discovered last Tuesday had skimmed past the Earth in its closest flyby.
Asteroid 2024 GJ2
The asteroid, dubbed 2024 GJ2, is roughly the size of a giraffe or car. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the asteroid spans between 2.5 and 5 meters. This implies that its weight class would have burned up in the atmosphere of the Earth if it were to have a more direct intersection with the planet.
Based on calculations, the asteroid was projected to zip past the Earth at roughly 11,100 miles or 0.00012 astronomical units. Though this may seem very distant, it is quite close to a cosmic scale. Such a distance equals just 3% 4% of the Earth-Moon distance of 238,900 miles.
2024 GJ2 Closely Flies By Earth
Astronomers think that the asteroid's closest approach occurred at 2:28:42 p.m. EDT on April 11. The distance was roughly 7,641 miles, or 12,298 kilometers.
According to the ESA's near-Earth Objects Coordination Center, the asteroid's next closest flyby will be in 2093. When this occurs, the space rock will not be as close as it is today. Its approach in 2093 is projected to be 205,947 kilometers from the Earth, which is ten times farther than its recent flyby. This is also equivalent to over half the Earth-Moon distance.
Near-Earth Objects
Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) are mainly asteroids or comets that nearby planets' gravitational force nudge into orbits. This nudge allows them to get close to the Earth. Technically speaking, NEOs have a trajectory that brings them within 1.3 astronomical units of the Sun and 0.3 astronomical units of the Earth. Most NEOs have a width of around three meters to 40 kilometers.
Most NEOs are asteroids or near-Earth asteroids (NEAs). Of the 600,000 known asteroids in the solar system, more than 20,000 are NEAs. The majority are in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.
NEAs can be grouped into four families depending on the parameters of their orbits: the Amors, Apollos, Atens, and Atiras.
The Amors refer to NEAs that approach the Earth and have orbits that bring them within the Martian orbit but not the Earth's. Apollos refers to NEAs that cross the Earth's orbit with a semimajor axis bigger than the Earth's, while Atens refers to NEAs that cross the Earth's path and have orbits with semimajor axes smaller than those of Earth's orbit. Lastly, Atiras refers to NEAs with orbits that are entirely contained within the Earth's orbit.
A primary concern for NEAs is the possibility of them being potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). This has been defined by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab based on the potential of the asteroid to pose danger as it nears the Earth. It specifically concerns the minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) or the asteroid-Earth distance when its orbit touches or crosses the Earth's orbit of the object. It also concerns the object's brightness if its distance from the Earth is equivalent to the Earth-Sun distance.
Only a few NEAs are considered PHAs. However, due to their potential threat to Earth, space agencies worldwide have been working hard to distinguish and monitor these dangerous rocks.
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