The asteroid, which was named 2015 FF, will pass by Earth on Friday, NASA said.
An asteroid with the estimated diameter of about 42 to 92 feet or just about the size of an adult blue whale is expected to pass near Earth on Friday, August 12. NASA said that the asteroid named 2015 FF is traveling 33,012 km/h or 27 times the speed of sound.
According to Space.com, the 2015 FF asteroid will come within 4.3 million kilometers, or just about eight times the average distance between the Earth and its moon, making it a very short distance. NASA labels any space object that comes within 193 million km as a "near-Earth object" and any fast-moving object within 7.5 million km as "potentially hazardous."
Because the 2015 FF asteroid is traveling quickly and falls within the 7.5 million km range, it has been categorized as "potentially hazardous" by NASA. Given this distinction, NASA's astronomers are now closely monitoring the asteroid and other objects like it, determining any deviation from its predicted trajectories. Such occurrences include when an asteroid bounces off another asteroid or object that would make it create another path that may be devastating for residents of Earth.
How NASA Monitors Moving Space Objects
NASA monitors space objects using the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which is made up of four telescopes that scans the entire night sky daily or every 24 hours. ATLAS first came online in 2017 and since then it has detected more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets.
ATLAS has also detected two asteroids called 2019 MO and 2018 LA, which both hit Earth. 2019 MO fell into the southern Coast of Puerto Rico, while 2018 LA landed near the border of Botswana and South Africa. Both asteroids were too small to cause any major damage.
Thanks to groundbreaking new technology, NASA is now able to estimate the trajectories of all near-Earth objects through the end of the century. The agency said that there is currently no known danger from an apocalyptic asteroid collision for the next 100 years or so. Despite this, NASA remains vigilant as there have been a number of devastating asteroid impacts in recent history.
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Why NASA Continues to Watch the Skies
NASA continuously monitors the skies to ensure that the Earth is prepared for any unexpected events, such as the one in March 2021, in which a bowling ball-sized meteor exploded over Vermont with a force of 200 kilograms of TNT, Livescience reported. In 2013, a meteor struck the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, generating a blast of about 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, or up to 26 to 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb. The result was fireballs raining down over the city, damaging buildings, breaking windows, and injuring up to 1,200 people.
The public should rest assured, however, that NASA and other space agencies around the world are equipped to handle any asteroid coming the Earth's way and are capable of deflecting the object through various efforts. Back in November 2021, NASA launched a spacecraft as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to redirect a non-hazardous asteroid named Dimorphos, by pushing it off course later this year.
