Maybe we were lucky that we missed it: the asteroid that was "too close" to the Earth - voila! technology

The biggest fear of the space agencies is an asteroid impact, which will cause fatal damage to the Earth and may also lead to its obliteration.

Therefore, major attempts are made at NASA to intercept asteroids from a possible collision course. However, sometimes there are misses - and one such happened at the very beginning of this year.

At the end of last week, the asteroid 2023 AV approached the Earth, its trajectory was captured by the telescope of an observatory in Arizona. It passed at a distance of 9,180 km "m from the ball, closer than many large satellites scattered in space, some within a range of 35 thousand km. Just to explain the ear, the distance between Tel Aviv and New York is about 9,190 km - almost the same as the range where the asteroid was observed, nothing in space terms.

This is a very small asteroid about the size of a golf cart.

What would happen if it hit the Earth?

not too much.

It seems that it would have exploded in the atmosphere and turned into a harmless fireball.

The asteroid that hit Chelyabinsk in Russia a decade ago was 10 times larger,

Still, it is important that he came so close, due to the fact that his trajectory was missed.

Astronomers are worried about larger and more harmful asteroids that may come from the direction of the Sun and produce a "blind spot" that does not allow for their diagnosis.

Since measurement of asteroid distances began in 1901, it ranks 17th in terms of its distance from the globe.

• technology

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• asteroid