This house-sized asteroid can potentially destroy our homes
Asteroids are special. Can you believe that these space rocks with no particular direction or destination could be where water originated? However, they are as dangerous as they are special. Their close flybys with Earth are often scary. In fact, one of them is already headed our way. Dubbed '2022 TK1,' this house-sized asteroid will be very close to Earth tonight.
Why does this story matter?
A space rock is headed our way to test Earth's defensive mettle. Unbeknown to the asteroid, we have buffed up our defense with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's DART. From what we know so far, this asteroid has no plans of hurting us. It only wants to scare us. Well, these mischievous rocks may have to try a little harder to achieve that.
The asteroid was discovered on October 2
The asteroid 2022 TK1 is approximately 53 feet (12-meter) in diameter. It was discovered on October 2, 2022. Its perihelion is 135 million km away from the Sun close to Earth's orbit, while the aphelion is 689 million km away near Jupiter's orbit. To complete one orbit, the space rock takes 1,668 days. It will fly past us tonight at 8:17 pm IST.
It will come as close as 3.81 million km
The asteroid 2022 TK1 will come as close as 3.81 million km to Earth. It will go past us at a relative velocity of 46,872km/h. The distance may look like a lot, but it is nothing in cosmic units. If you consider the asteroid's velocity, any slight deviation in its path should be enough to cause localized damage to our planet.
Near-Earth objects within 8 million km are potentially hazardous
Let's get into the juicy bit now. Should we be worried about the 2022 TK1? Now that you have heard about DART's successful alteration of an asteroid's path, you might be thinking that even if TK1 deviates, we'd be able to handle it. Well, we may have to wait and watch for that. Technically, 2022 TK1 is a Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO).
