Skyscraper-sized asteroid to pass by Earth today. How effective would it be?

Earlier on Friday, another asteroid, dubbed 2016 CZ31, passed by Earth. Astronomers estimate that the asteroid measures about 400 feet (122 m) across at its widest point, making it about as wide as a 40-story building.

Astronomers had predicted that it would safely miss our planet, about 1,740,000 miles (2,800,000 km) from Earth – or more than seven times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. According to NASA, this space rock gets closer to Earth every few years, with the next one scheduled for January 2028.

NASA and other space agencies closely monitor thousands of such near-Earth objects. Even if an asteroid’s trajectory places it at a distance of millions of miles from our planet, there is little chance that the asteroid’s orbit may change slightly after a large body such as a planet interacts with gravity; Even a small shift like this could potentially put an asteroid on a collision course with Earth on future flybys, Space.com informed of

As such, space agencies take planetary defense very seriously. In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid-deflection spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will collide directly into the 525-foot-wide (160 m) asteroid Dimorphos in autumn 2022 (opens in new tab) . The collision won’t destroy the asteroid, but it could slightly change the space rock’s orbital path (opens in new tab), as previously reported by Live Science. The mission will help test the feasibility of asteroid deflection, if an asteroid poses an imminent threat to our planet in the future.

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