An international team of astronomers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile has discovered three large nearby objects for the first time. asteroids, which until now have been hidden from the bright light of the Sun. One of them is the largest potentially dangerous asteroid discovered for the Earth in the last eight years.

The three space rocks belong to a population of asteroids that move within the solar system, between the Sun and the orbits of Earth and Venus. This is a very difficult region for astronomical observations, since ground-based telescopes are “blinded” by the glow of our star, and space telescopes are not able to observe at all, since their electronics will be burned by solar radiation. Thus, to date, only 25 asteroids have been observed with orbits entirely between the Earth and the Sun.

The most dangerous of the three is “2022 AP7” with a diameter of one and a half kilometers, whose orbit at some point may cross the orbit of our planet. The other two, about one kilometer in diameter, are 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, whose orbits are estimated to remain far from Earth’s “path” in the sky.

2021 PH27 is the closest asteroid discovered so far to the Sun, and it is believed that during its orbit, when it comes very close to our star, its surface becomes so hot that it can melt lead.

“Halloween Asteroid”

In addition, the recently discovered asteroid 2022 RM4, the size of a skyscraper and also classified as potentially dangerous for the future, will fly by the Earth on November 1.

The so-called “Halloween asteroid” (celebrated on the night of October 31st mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries) has an estimated diameter of 330 to 740 meters and will pass at a speed of 84,500 kilometers per hour over a distance of 2.3 million kilometers. from our planet, which is about six times the average distance from the Earth to the Moon, according to the American Space Agency (NASA).

The latter classifies as a “near-Earth object” any celestial body approaching at a distance of less than 193 million km, and as a “potentially dangerous” any large body receding at a distance of less than 7.5 million km. designation, it is constantly monitored by astronomers for a possible change in its orbit, which could lead to a catastrophic collision with our planet.

NASA has calculated the orbits of nearly all near-Earth objects since the end of the 21st century. So far, no danger appears from the sky, at least for the next 100 years. If, alas, such a prospect of an asteroid falling to Earth arises, space containment technologies are already being tested as part of planetary defense.

^{Source: APE-MEB}