A very dangerous thing happened again! The same astronomer who last week discovered 2022 EB5 hours before it actually hit Earth near the west coast of Greenland, discovered another terrifying asteroid. Fortunately, the asteroid impact on Earth was averted this time as it flew past our planet, but not before it approached Earth dangerously. On the night of March 25, Hungarian astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky found a new asteroid while looking at the stars. The asteroid was discovered a few hours before it flew terribly close to Earth. The distance between this asteroid and Earth was only 8,700 km! This is even shorter than the distance between GPS satellites in the sky and on Earth. The asteroid was briefly named SAR2594 by the astronomer, but has been designated 2022 FD1 for organized astronomical classification. Sarneczky took to Twitter to announce his discovery. In a post he wrote: “Almost. Again 🙂 My recently discovered asteroid # Sar2594 will pass cca. 15,100 km from Earth around 09:10 UT. Minus earth radius = 8,700 km above the surface. The astronomer who calls himself an “asteroid hunter” on his micro-blogging site has recently been productive in discovering these celestial objects. important space observatory.
Asteroid is dangerously close to hitting the Earth
Although the moment is very special for the astronomer, we must not forget that if the asteroid hit, it could easily mean disaster for many. While the asteroid was not large at 2-4 meters, it was traveling at an extremely high speed of 40,265 miles per hour. For reference, it is almost 40 times the speed of sound. At such a speed, even an asteroid strike on the Earth’s surface was unlikely, could have caused a sound explosion and resulted in extensive damage to an urban environment. The scariest part is that if it were not for Sárneczky, the asteroid might have gone completely unnoticed. And these fears are not unfounded. The astronomer also wrote on Twitter that the asteroid changed its inclination as it crossed the Earth due to the gravitational force of our planet. If it deviated otherwise, it could have even hit the Earth. Interestingly, the asteroid 2022 FD1 has been registered as the 13th closest approach to an unmanned object near Earth (NEO) in the NASA database. This means that there are only 12 other asteroids that have come closer to Earth and did not cause an asteroid strike on Earth.
