The space rock, bigger than two Empire State buildings stacked together, will not come so close to our planet again for decades.
When it makes its pass by Earth in a few weeks' time, 1994 PC1 is due to be travelling at a speed of around 43,000 miles per hour. Afterwards it will shoot back off into the solar system to orbit the sun once again, which it does once every 1.5 years or so. However, it won't come this close to Earth again for decades—the year 2105, according to NASA.
1994 PC1 was discovered in the year 1994 by R.H. McNaught at the Siding Spring observatory in Australia, according to The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.like 1994 PC1, it does not necessarily mean that it will ever hit Earth. A PHA is defined based on a number of characteristics, including how close it's expected to come to Earth and what its estimated size is.
Specifically, any asteroid that can't get any closer to Earth than around 4.6 million miles or is smaller than around 500 feet in diameter is not considered to be a PHA,Systems are in place to continually track thousands of known asteroids in case one of them poses a threat to Earth. Currently CNEOS listsknown near-Earth asteroids, with roughly 1,000 of these being a kilometer in size or more.However, scientists are still preparing for such an event.
The purpose of the DART mission spacecraft is to slam into the side of a small space rock called Dimorphos next year at a speed of around four miles per second. Scientists will then measure how much difference this impact makes to its path through space. A stock photo shows an asteroid in space against a backdrop of stars. Scientists track thousands of space rocks to make sure none are due to hit Earth.
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