To check for asteroids that threaten Earth, NASA has established its Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC, and the organization has now issued a warning about an asteroid expected to make its closest approach to Earth. Although these space rocks are far out in space in their own elliptical orbits, they rotate, sometimes very erratically, as they go. Sometimes, a planet’s gravitational pull knocks these asteroids off their tracks and sends them toward an Earth-like planet.
NASA has released details on the speed, distance, size and more of the asteroid that is approaching Earth today.
Asteroid 2023 KE5 details
Named Asteroid 2023 KE5, the asteroid is heading towards Earth today, June 1. The asteroid was spotted by NASA’s Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which is responsible for monitoring the sky and monitoring various nearby areas. Earth Objects (NEOs). Shockingly, this asteroid is almost the size of a commercial airliner, nearly 77 feet across!
According to NASA, asteroid 2023 KE5 is expected to approach the planet today at a speed of 30547 kilometers per hour at a distance of 2.2 million kilometers. It belongs to the Amor group of near-Earth asteroids, which are near-Earth asteroids that orbit outside Earth, but are named after asteroid 1221 Amor in the interior of Mars.
How NASA Tracks an Asteroid – The Process Explained
When NASA’s telescopes observe a new near-Earth asteroid (NEA), astronomers measure the asteroid’s observed positions in the sky and report them to the Minor Planet Center. According to NASA, the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) then uses that data to determine the asteroid’s most likely orbit around the Sun.
To estimate whether an impact is possible and the actual orbit location, NASA’s new Sentry II uses a new algorithm and selects random points across the entire uncertainty region. This allows the Sentry-II to zero in on very low probability impact scenarios.