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For comparison, Mercury has a semi-major axis of 0.39 AU and an orbital period of 88 days. [14] Being so close to the Sun, at perihelion the asteroid is moving at 106 km/s (240,000 mph). [ 5 ] The relativistic perihelion shift of this object is 1.6 times that of Mercury, which is 42.9 arcseconds per century.
In gravitationally bound systems, the orbital speed of an astronomical body or object (e.g. planet, moon, artificial satellite, spacecraft, or star) is the speed at which it orbits around either the barycenter (the combined center of mass) or, if one body is much more massive than the other bodies of the system combined, its speed relative to the center of mass of the most massive body.
A Mercury crosser or Mercury grazer is an asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Mercury. The Mercury crossers proper have aphelia outside Mercury's (0.4667 AU) and perihelia inside Mercury's (0.3075 AU), whereas those listed here as outer grazers have perihelia within Mercury's aphelion but not within its perihelion.
The space rock does not remotely pose an existential threat to life on Earth. It measures 130 to 300 feet across , a pebble compared to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, which is estimated ...
So far, every asteroid with moons has turned out to be a rubble pile, a loose conglomeration of rock and metal that may be half empty space by volume. The investigated asteroids are as large as 280 km in diameter, and include 121 Hermione (268×186×183 km), and 87 Sylvia (384×262×232 km).
The list below shows all approaches by potentially hazardous objects (objects which can approach Earth within 0.05 astronomical units (AU)) without atmospheric contact which have been the closest ever observed at some point in time, from the discovery of the first such object to the record holder as of February 2025.
An asteroid that measures up to 300 feet across could smack into Earth in 2032, and while NASA says the chances of a collision are “extremely low,” the probability has been increasing since ...
Here's what to know about Apophis and how space agencies hope to protect Earth from other asteroids like it. Apophis to make 2029 flyby to Earth Apophis is projected to pass within 20,000 miles of ...