Asteroid bigger than Taj Mahal racing towards Earth today; here’s what NASA says

An asteroid greater than the Taj Mahal is racing in the direction of the Earth, stated NASA. The asteroid named 1994 WRI2 is claimed to go by our planet in the present day, Monday, about 3.8 million miles away. The quantity 1994 depicts the 12 months it was found by US astronomer Carolyn S. Shoemaker at Palomar Observatory (November 28, 1994).

The US house company stated that the asteroid that’s going to go by the earth is a few 430 ft, is very large, and reveals the potential to provoke cataclysmic injury on no matter it crashes into. The scale of this asteroid is claimed to be double the scale of the Large Ben clock in London. Or, you may as well say that In one other sense, the asteroid measure is of the identical measurement and top because the Taj Mahal in India.

Furthermore, if the asteroid crashes into the planet, it might produce 77 megabytes of TNT. The vitality potential of this might be 1.5 occasions of the largest nuclear weapon examined, Tsar Bomba. This nuclear weapon was exploded by Russia with 3,333 occasions that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard retains monitoring asteroids and comets that strategy Earth. Presently, it’s exhibiting 5 main asteroids underneath watch.

Asteroid protection mission DART

NASA had launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Take a look at (DART) spacecraft that can intentionally crash into an asteroid on November 24. This would be the take a look at of know-how to see if the crash can deliver any adjustments within the movement of an asteroid in house.

The spacecraft goal is the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos and its moonlet and can pose no risk to Earth, the US house company confirmed. “DART might be humanity’s first take a look at for planetary protection — to see if we might change the course of an asteroid ought to we ever uncover one headed towards Earth,” stated Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s affiliate administrator for the science mission directorate, in a weblog put up.