According to the European Space Agency (ESA), there are now a total of 3,039 near-Earth asteroids known to science, and the number is rapidly rising.
The European Space Agency claims that 1,425 of these asteroids can “impact” our planet, and are therefore under the “watchful eye” of a network of telescopes.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the majority of the 30,000 asteroids have been discovered thanks to technology that is improving rapidly.
“The good news is that more than half of the near-Earth asteroids known today have been discovered in the past six years, which shows how much better our asteroid vision has improved,” said Richard Moisel, head of the ESA’s Planetary Defense Division. Telescopes and new detection methods, it’s only a matter of time until scientists find all the space rocks that are on a path that brings them close to Earth’s orbit, called Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA).
An asteroid is called a “Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA)” when its path is within 1.3 astronomical units (au) from the Sun. An astronomical unit is the distance between the Sun and Earth (93 million miles), so near-Earth asteroids can be located within a range of at least 0.3 astronomical units, or 45 million kilometers, from the orbit of our planet.
Currently, near-Earth asteroids make up regarding a third of the nearly one million asteroids discovered so far in the solar system. Most are located in the asteroid belt, the ring-shaped region of the solar system, between Jupiter and Mars.
It is estimated that among the 3,039 new asteroids discovered, regarding 10,000 are more than 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter, and regarding 1,000 are more than 3,280 feet (1 km) in diameter, highlighting the need to track these space rocks.
The first near-Earth asteroid ever discovered, dubbed “433 Eros”, was first observed by German astronomer Carl Gustav Witt from the Berlin Observatory on August 13, 1898.
The orbit of 433 Eros, which is notorious for its strange, long shape and rocky composition, brings the asteroid to within 13.5 million miles away from Earth – 57 times the distance to the Moon.
In addition to being the first near-Earth asteroid discovered, 433 Eros became the first asteroid to be orbited by a spacecraft and the first to be landed by a spacecraft.
Fortunately, experts can discover the locations of these asteroids and whether they will hit Earth hundreds of years in the future.
It is worth noting that, on average, the Earth collides with a rock the size of a football field every 5,000 years, and an asteroid is capable of ending civilization every million years, according to data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program.
In an effort to counter the threat of asteroids that may one day approach our planet and pose a threat to life, NASA has formed a Planetary Defense Program, which includes the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.
DART launched from California last November – and finally completed its 10-month journey when it hit the asteroid Demorphos last month, aiming to slightly change its course.
NASA announced earlier this month that the mission was a success, as the spacecraft managed to shorten Demorphos’ orbit by 32 minutes.
Indeed, Demorphos posed no threat to Earth, but the $325 million mission was a test of what it would take to defend Earth when it faced a threat from a space rock one day.
