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Near Earth Asteroid Programs on High Alert After Incoming Asteroid 2022 OE2 Discovered Just Days Ago

 

August 4, 2022

 Asteroid 2022 OE2, classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), will safely pass Earth today August 4th (12:23 ET) at a distance of 3.2 million miles.  The bad news ?  It was just recently discovered a matter of days ago on July 26th.

But the good news is that NASA claims any such concern of these types of asteroids will not exist for another 100 years. Other good news: The Double Asteroid Redirection Test, a mission launched by NASA to deflect asteroids, will take place this Autumn 2022.  It will slam a spacecraft directly into Dimorphos, a 525 ft wide asteroid, in order to change Dimorphos' orbital path.  The mission will test the ability to deflect an asteroid should it pose an imminent threat to the planet.

If Asteroid 2022 OE2 (estimated the size of the Empire State Building)² were to collide with Earth it could vaporize a region the size of Manhattan or cause a giant life-threatening tsunami.

According to CNEOS, the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, asteroid 2022 OE2 is hurtling at a speed of 72,000 mph, about 40 times the speed of a rifle bullet.  It falls into a category called an Apollo asteroid, which means it crosses Earth's orbit and also orbits around the Sun. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FziGNsUpII).

CNEOS has discovered more than 29,000 near-Earth objects to date, a vast majority which are asteroids.  A Near-Earth Object, or NEO, is any object which passes within 30 million miles of our planet's orbit.  PHA, or Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, is one that passes closer than 4.7 million miles to Earth and is at least 500 ft across.

 

Do Look Up.  One of the ways of detecting Near Earth Objects (NEOs) is with an advanced ground-based telescope such as the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Mount Haleakala, Hawaii.  Another way is to launch craft into space such as NASA’s NEOWISE mission in 2009.  This system will be vastly improved by the new NEO Surveyor mission planned for year 2026. ¹   {University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy}

 

 

The Barringer Crater in Arizona, proof that meteors have visited Earth in the past.  It is three-quarters mile wide and 560 feet deep. The meteor impact occurred 50,000 years ago. {NASA}

 

The great philosophers, such as Aristotle (384 to 322 BC) of the Classical period in Ancient Greece, speculated upon such events of natural disaster.   It is thought that a world taken by plague and virus, suffering adverse climate, and experiencing cosmic warnings of meteors or comets has disobeyed its oath to God by becoming too war-like and feudal.  It would be best to set aside one's feudal instincts and join its neighbors of the world to combine resources in case we must defend against a real cataclysmic event.

.. good news is that NASA claims any such concern of these types of asteroids will not exist for another 100 years.

 

1. "Do Look Up" is considered a counter expression to "Don't Look Up" a phrase stating a sort of backward-irony and film title of a 2021 dark comedy-satire portraying the possibility of a comet of cataclysmic size impacting Earth.  Some thought the film was in regards to Comet Leonard, a comet of similar proportion that made a close flyby to Earth back in December 2021.  However, Comet Leonard was discovered a year ahead and behaved exactly according to prediction.

 

2.  There is some apparent discrepancy in the size of asteroid 2022 OE2.  The information released by NASA states the asteroid is between 557 and 1246 feet.  Regardless of where 2022 OE2 lies within this range, it is classed a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) because it is over 500 feet and approached Earth at a distance under 4.7 million miles.  The potential damage in case of a collision with Earth (i.e,. vaporizing an area the size of Manhattan) is based on 500 feet.