Three giant asteroids will have a close encounter with Earth on Christmas Day

Not one, not two, but three huge asteroids are paying us a holiday visit, and they’re due to travel relatively close to Earth. on christmas day. In relation to the distances of the universe, that is, there is no reason to panic.

The three asteroids are named 2022 YL1, 2013 YA14, and 2022 TE14, and are estimated to be 124 to 278 feet, 167 to 360 feet, and 312 to 689 feet in diameter, respectively.

Therefore, 2022 YL1 is the same size as the wingspan of a Boeing 777, 2013 YA14 is similar in scale to an American football field, while 2022 TE14 will be the same size as a 50-story building. We will call them asteroids A, B and C respectively.

All three asteroids orbit the sun, occasionally passing close to Earth. Most of the asteroids in the solar system orbit the sun in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiterwhere there are believed to be around 1.1 million.

“Asteroids are ‘pieces of a planet that didn’t pass’ that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. However, because they are relatively small, asteroids can be altered quite easily, so they can develop orbits that intersect. those of the planets,” Jay Tate, observatory director at the UK Space Guard Centre, said previously Newsweek.

Each of the asteroids will pass by Earth at a distance of 0.01959, 0.00691 and 0.02872 AU, respectively NASA Data from NEO Earth Close Approaches. An astronomical unit, equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun—93 million miles—which means that asteroid A will pass about 1,820,000 miles from Earth, asteroid B 642,000 miles and asteroid C at 2,670,000 miles.

While that may seem like a long way off, as far as the solar system is concerned, asteroids are getting pretty close to Earth: the moon is only 238,900 miles away, while our nearest neighbor, Venus, is it is currently 153.6 million miles away.

Many of the asteroids that pass close to Earth are classified as near-Earth objects, and are designated as such based on how close they come and their size. So far we have about 30,000 known NEOs, some of which are also in another category called “potentially hazardous” objects. These are defined as 4.6 million miles from Earth’s orbit and also it measures over 460 feet in diameter.

Therefore, only asteroid C falls into the potentially dangerous category.

“The potentially hazardous designation simply means that over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not evaluate these long-term, multi-century impact possibilities “, Paul Chodas, NASA manager. Center for the Study of Near-Earth Objects, said previously Newsweek.

Despite the proximity of these Christmas asteroids to Earth, the chances of them or any of the other thousands of asteroids in the solar system reaching our planet are very small.

“No known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact with Earth within the next 100 years,” says NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

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