Asteroid 2018 BG5 racing towards Earth

Asteroid 2018 BG5, a house-sized space rock belonging to the Apollo group of near-Earth asteroids, is racing towards our planet at a speed of 30,094 kilometers per hour, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The asteroid, which is estimated to be around 52 feet wide, will make a close approach to Earth on July 27, 2023, coming as close as 4.1 million kilometers. This distance may seem large, but it is relatively small in astronomical terms, considering the vastness of space and the size of the asteroid.

NASA’s new Sentry II system, which uses a new algorithm to select random points throughout the uncertainty region of the asteroid’s orbit, has determined that there is no risk of impact with Earth in the foreseeable future. However, even a small asteroid can cause significant damage if it enters the Earth’s atmosphere, as demonstrated by the Chelyabinsk meteor event in 2013, when a 59 feet asteroid exploded over Russia, injuring over 1000 people and damaging nearly 8000 buildings.

Therefore, NASA and other space agencies are constantly monitoring the near-Earth environment for potential hazardous asteroids and developing technologies and strategies to deflect or destroy them if necessary. Asteroid 2018 BG5 is one of the many space rocks that are being tracked by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, which aims to discover, catalog and characterize near-Earth objects and assess their impact hazard.worldnewsstudio.com/asteroid-2018-bg5-racing-towards-earth/