NASA has tracked enough asteroids to “end civilization” this year

NASA has pursued more than 1,400 asteroids in 2020, including one large enough to end civilization.

The space agency’s center for the near-Earth object looks at rocks that could bring them to 1.3 astronomical units of the Sun – or 45 million kilometers from Earth, which is close in space terms.

In April 2020, the largest landmark – Asteroid 52768 – was classified as a potentially dangerous asteroid (PHA). Measuring between 1.8 km and 4.1 km in diameter, it could be as much as five times larger than the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world.

Even if this particular asteroid will not end soon, it is not something that NASA has ruled out in the future.

Obviously, it would be quite short-sighted, given the vastness of the universe and the large amount of things floating there.

NASA discovers about 30 new Near Earth (NEO) objects each week and has looked at more than 19,000 objects since early 2019.

But no matter how hard they try, they can’t detect them all, which means that an unexpected impact cannot be ruled out.

The entire event was broadcast live online by scientists from the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome and showed the moment when the giant celestial rock piled up next to our planet in August.

Gian Masi, who hosted the live stream, said: “We know where the asteroid is because we know its orbit. And the same orbit allows us to say ‘it won’t hit us.'”

While telescope recordings are not exactly the best quality recordings, you can clearly distinguish the asteroid heading through a starry sky.

Another asteroid made a “near-Earth approach” on September 8th. NEO (object close to Earth), 37 meters long, known as 2020 PT4, moved past the Earth and Moon at a distance of just over a million miles away – which in the context of space certainly counts as “close”.

The space rock, which is about the length of two trucks, jumped at a speed of about 12.56 kilometers per second.

However, NASA has assured us that if 2020 PT4 ever collided with Earth, its relatively small size (in terms of space) would probably disintegrate into the atmosphere, causing minimal damage to our planet.

The asteroid, called 2020 HQ, flew inside about 2,950 km (1,830 miles) from Earth – extremely close in terms of asteroids.

In fact, according to asteroid trackers and a catalog compiled by Sormano The Astronomical Observatory in Italy is the closest ever recorded.