Asteroid 2011 AM24 set to make close approach to Earth on July 26
WION reports that a potentially hazardous asteroid, 2011 AM24, will approach Earth on July 26, citing an announcement issued by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of the Asteroid Watch program. The object, with a diameter of about 1,640 feet, is moving at a speed of over 3.9 miles per second. Experts predict that asteroid 2011 AM24 will pass Earth at a distance of 4 million miles.
5:36 PM EDT, July 25, 2024
NASA classifies asteroids as potentially hazardous if they move around the Sun in orbits that intersect Earth’s orbit or come near it. This category includes asteroids that come within less than 0.05 astronomical units (19.5 lunar distances), which is about 4.7 million miles, and are large enough to cause a regional-scale disaster in the event of a collision with Earth.
Asteroid will pass by Earth
Asteroid 2011 AM24 has been classified by NASA as a Near Earth Object (NEO). It also belongs to the Apollo group, which consists of asteroids that orbit close to our planet and cross its orbit. Sometimes, they also cross the orbits of planets such as Venus or Mercury. As of January 1, 2023, 17,402 asteroids belonging to the Apollo group were known. For comparison, in January 2017, there were "only" 8,316 known.
2011 AM24 orbits the Sun every 467 days, and its next close approach to Earth will not occur until September 2038. NASA closely monitors the path of this asteroid and similar objects. The agency is continually working on the development of planetary defense to protect Earth from asteroids that may be on a collision course with our planet in the future.
In September 2022, NASA caused the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft, with a mass of about 1,320 pounds, to collide with the asteroid Dimorphos, which is comparable in size to the Great Pyramid of Giza and is the moon of the asteroid Didymos. This successfully impacted the orbit of the foreign object. However, a side effect was the ejection of a large amount of dust and rocks into space. Some of the resulting fragments were even a meter in diameter.
