Potentially dangerous giant asteroid to fly by Earth on March 4

A massive asteroid with a diameter of up to 1.3 kilometres is coming it’s way to earth and will pass nearby next month. The possibly dangerous asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) will pass within 4.5 million kilometres of Earth. At its closest approach, the asteroid will be around 13 times the typical lunar distance, according to astronomers. The heavenly object, on the other hand, will be travelling at a breathtaking speed of almost 26,800 miles per hour. On March 4, at about 3:00 am ET (1:30 pm IST), a near encounter will occur.

On January 30, an astronomer from Italy’s Virtual Telescope Project caught an image of the asteroid speeding towards the earth. The astronomer Gianluca Masi discovered the asteroid with an Earth-based telescope while it was around 35 million kilometres distant.

The asteroid can be seen as a little white dot indicated by an arrow in the middle of the image released on the Virtual Telescope Project’s website. It was shot remotely with the Elena, a robotic telescope unit, during a single 420-second exposure.

According to reports, the asteroid completes a circle around the Sun every 384 days, which is slightly longer than the time it takes Earth to go around the Sun. The fact that it is classified as potentially hazardous does not mean it will strike on earth. It can get quite near to humans and the size of the asteroid is also taken into account while classifying it. Another asteroid passed pretty near to Earth last month. It was over 1 kilometre wide and flew past Earth on January 18. It was named 7482 (1994 PC1) and was over 1 kilometre wide.

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While no threat of an asteroid crash has been discovered so far, NASA is attempting to develop the capabilities to deal with such a catastrophe in future. It has launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which will crash a spaceship against an asteroid to prod it to alter its course. The crash is not expected to happen until September or October 2022.