This Friday, March 11, an asteroid that measures up to half a kilometer in diameter and travels at a speed greater than eight kilometers per second will pass close to Earth. This celestial body has been classified by NASA as “potentially dangerous”.
Known as 2015 DR215 , this asteroid was sighted for the first time on February 18, 2015. It is, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), an Atira-class asteroid, asteroids whose orbits They are entirely within the Earth’s.
Closer to Earth than ever
The CNEOS has reported that the estimated time when 2015 DR215 will be at its minimum distance from our planet will be at 3:41 p.m. in the Iberian Peninsula , and at 2:41 p.m. in the Canary archipelago. It is not an exact time, since a margin of error of 5 minutes before or after is contemplated. 2015 DR215 orbits the Sun every 199 days (0.54 years).
Asteroid and Earth orbits
The asteroid, at that scheduled time, will be located 6,700,488 kilometers from Earth, that is, 17.43 times the distance from the Moon to our planet (in astronomical navigation, the lunar distance, or LD for its acronym in English, it is the most used measurement to calculate the distance of another celestial body). For reference, the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers.
Despite the danger label assigned by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL for its acronym in English, Jet Propulsion Laboratory), there really is no need to be alarmed by its proximity at such a distance, since it was recently confirmed on Twitter that ” There are no predicted asteroid impact threats to our planet in the foreseeable future .”
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test in Spanish) on board a SpaceX spacecraft in November last year, the first step of the AIDA project (Assessment of Deviation of Impacto de Asteroides in Spanish) a planetary defense plan in case the Earth were ever seriously threatened by a collision with an asteroid.
“DART is the first mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating an asteroid deflection method by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”
Potentially dangerous asteroid
An asteroid is considered “potentially dangerous” when it is likely to come threateningly close to Earth. The asteroid orbits faster than Earth, travels at 8.31 kilometers per second and would cause extensive damage if it collided with the planet. However, it is not as fast as others, since other asteroids move from 10 km/s.
As for its diameter, calculations estimate that it is between 220 meters and 490 meters (the most accepted estimate being about 277 meters in diameter , depending on its brightness and the way it reflects light), being a considerable size that helps the fact of being classified as “potentially dangerous”.
Comparison of the size of the asteroid over the New York skyline (Source: Spacereference.org)
This precaution is taken, among other aspects, by the size of the body, since for example today another asteroid has passed closer , 2022 EV-1, at “only” 10.68 Lunar Distances (4,110,000 kilometers), but in that case measures only between 16 meters and 36 meters and is not of the Atira class, but Aton (an orbit whose semi-major axis is less than that of the Earth). 2015 DR215, despite being a stadium-sized asteroid , is not that big in absolute terms (being considered small to average).
Taking its orbit into account, it will not be the last time it pays us a visit. The closest one will also be on March 11, 2023, in which its speed will be higher (23.96 km/s), but it will not get as close (173.13 Lunar Distances). On March 22, 2028, it will be close again, at 22.125 Lunar Distances (8,505,157 kilometers away) and a speed of 8.48 km/s.