Asteroids
Asteroid 2021 EQ3 to fly past Earth on 23rd March 2021
Asteroids are rocky formations that are found in our solar system, orbiting the Sun or
Planets, or with more unusual trajectories.
....but first, the video game
Asteroids is also a space themed video game released in 1979 where a space ship has to dodge
a large field of increasingly fast and large asteroids. If you haven't played it, give it a
go!
The high score is currently over 41 million and took the player over 3 days to achieve.
Getting back to rocky Asteroids.
Those that orbit a planet are known as Trojan Asteroid's
It is the Sun's a Planet's gravity that determine the asteroid's trajectory in orbit.
Asteroids were formed around 4.6 billion years ago, around the same time as our solar
system.
They can be quite large like Ceres, which is nearly 1000 kilometers across, so it is enormous!
Smaller asteroids can be as small as a metre so they vary a lot!
Asteroids come broadly in 3 varieties, Carbon based (greyish colour), Silicon based (greenish colour) or
Metallic (reddish colour). However there are some other rarer types out there, so keep looking.
Asteroids can be hazardous. Those classed as potentially hazardous could be on a collision course with
Earth in the distant future (I say distant, but could be even 10 to 40 years).
As they can be quite massive and moving fast, such a collision could lead to an Extinction Level Effect
(or ELE).
So, keeping track of Asteroids is an important task and one that could save the future of Earth and humanity and
ecosystems of Earth. With enough time and technology, the course of an Asteroid can be altered so that it can
be steered safely away from its collision course with Earth.
On 23rd March 2021 a large asteroid called 2021 EQ3 will pass by earth.
Set your alarm, if you are in the UK you will see it around 4:45am on 23rd March 2021
You should not fear it - this one is not on a collision course with Earth.
But it's coming closer to Earth than the Moon!
It's about 38 metres across so its quite big, and its going to be travelling fast.
Its coming in close too, around 175,000 miles away.
IF you want to watch it, you can see it via the Virtual Telescope Project website.
The telescope project is based in Rome.
Water and Organic Compounds found on Asteroid
In other Asteroid news, a particle from the asteroid "Itokawa" was analysed and amazingly
found to contain water and organic material!
This is super exciting as this water and organic compound originated away from Earth. Does this asteroid have its own ecosystem?
Could it give rise to a biology, or is this asteroid inhabited already?
How did the water and organic material get onto this asteroid. It is likely to have formed of its own
accord incredibly.
New research awaits.
Please let me know in the comments what your views are. Does finding water on an asteroid give more chance
to finding life out there in the universe? How do you think it got there? And what will we find next!