NASA announces an asteroid approaching Earth

By data NASA, on January 18, asteroid 1994 PC1 will approach the Earth. On this day, the rapprochement will be the maximum for the next 200 years. It will pass at a distance of approximately 1.93 million km from our planet (which is 5 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon) at a speed of 20 km/s.

The diameter of this asteroid is about a kilometer. From Earth, it is unlikely to be observed with the naked eye, but, as informs edition of EarthSky, it can be photographed with an amateur telescope and a camera with a shutter speed of 30-45 seconds.

The asteroid does not pose a danger to the Earth, but still belongs to the near-Earth objects. These are comets and asteroids, whose orbits are at a distance of up to 48 million kilometers from our planet. They are monitored by NASA and other space organizations.

This September, NASA plans launch a DART probe to orbit the asteroid Didymos and crash into it to try and change its orbit. If this experiment proves successful, such a system could be used in the future to repel asteroids that pose a danger to the Earth.