An asteroid long from the basketball court will rush off at a low-level flight next month, although scientists are not yet sure how close this will be.
According to NASA, the 2013 TX68 near-earth asteroid, which is supposedly 30 meters in diameter, will approach and fly near our planet on March 5th. Space cobblestone can, as it approaches at a distance of 17,700 kilometers (which is less than 5% of the distance from the Earth to the Moon), and remain at a distance of 14, 5 million kilometers.
In a statement made on February 3, 2016, NASA experts explain this huge variation by the fact that there are a lot of different trajectories along which an asteroid can travel. Ambiguity is a consequence of the fact that the object is observed relatively recently.
However, even the collision of this asteroid, first discovered in October 2013, with the Earth, is not fraught with great danger. Moreover, the chances that such an event will happen on September 28, 2017, are negligible - less than one in 250 million. And if you take its passage in 2046 and in 2097, then the probability is even lower. This is confirmed by the words of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manager from Pasadena, California, Paul Chodas. He argues that the probability of a collision in any of the three subsequent spans is so small that you should not worry. Moreover, according to him, further observations are likely to indicate that the chances of a collision will further decrease.
Just two years ago, the asteroid 2013 TX68 flew at a distance of two million kilometers.
According to scientists, the near-Earth object that exploded over Russian Chelyabinsk in February 2013 was about 20 meters in diameter. Then it led to the destruction of buildings, about a thousand people were injured. According to NASA experts, if the 2013 TX68 or an object comparable to it collides with our planet, the power of the explosion will be approximately two times higher than in the incident over the Russian city.
