NASA ASTEROID WATCH FULL
NASA ASTEROID WATCH PLUS

What happened when the dinosaur-killing asteroid slammed into Earth? It will be the largest asteroid to make a close approach to Earth all year, according to NASA, and the space rock is estimated to whiz by at about 47,200 mph (76,000 km/h) - or 20 times faster than a bullet fired from a rifle. miles, or 1.8 km, in diameter) and relatively close proximity to our planet's orbit. While all calculations point to a clear miss, NASA has labeled the asteroid 'potentially hazardous,' due to its enormous size (1.1. The stream begins on Thursday (May 26) at 9:00 p.m. Or you can watch the asteroid pass by live on the Virtual Telescope Project (opens in new tab)'s website. That's too far away to witness with the naked eye, but you might be able to spot it with a really powerful telescope, according to CNET (opens in new tab). On Friday (May 27), the rock will swing within about 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) of our planet - or nearly 10 times the average distance between Earth and the moon at about 10:26 a.m. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency.The asteroid, dubbed 7335 (1989 JA), orbits the sun once every 570 days or so, occasionally swooping a little too close to Earth for astronomers' comfort. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA’s Discovery Program. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft.

NASA ASTEROID WATCH PLUS

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering, plus safety and mission assurance. Just as the Lucy fossil provided unique insights into humanity’s evolution, the Lucy mission promises to revolutionize our knowledge of planetary origins and the formation of the solar system, including Earth. The Lucy mission is named after the fossilized skeleton of an early hominin (pre-human ancestor) discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and named “Lucy” by the team of paleoanthropologists who discovered it. “Today we celebrate this incredible milestone and look forward to the new discoveries that Lucy will uncover,” Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said after the launch. After completing its first four targeted flybys, the spacecraft will travel back to Earth for a third gravity boost in 2031, which will catapult it to the trailing swarm of Trojans for a 2033 encounter. Lucy will then journey toward its first Trojan asteroid encounter in the swarm ahead of Jupiter for a 2027 arrival. The spacecraft will then swing back toward Earth for another gravity assist in 2024, which will propel Lucy toward the Donaldjohanson asteroid – located within the solar system’s main asteroid belt – in 2025. That maneuver will accelerate and direct Lucy’s trajectory beyond the orbit of Mars. The spacecraft is traveling at roughly 67,000 mph (108,000 kph) on a trajectory that will orbit the Sun and bring it back toward Earth in October 2022 for the spacecraft’s first gravity assist. “It will still be several years before we get to the first Trojan asteroid, but these objects are worth the wait and all the effort because of their immense scientific value. “We started working on the Lucy mission concept early in 2014, so this launch has been long in the making,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator, based out of the Boulder, Colorado, branch of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), which is headquartered in San Antonio.

NASA ASTEROID WATCH FULL

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls | Full image and caption 16, 2021, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with the Lucy spacecraft aboard is seen in this 2 minute and 30-second exposure photograph as it launches from Space Launch Complex 41, Saturday, Oct.

Nasa asteroid watch