An asteroid will whizz by Earth on Oct. 12 without incident — and NASA intends to keep it that way.
The asteroid, dubbed 2012 TC4, measures between 30 and 100 feet across – potentially making it larger than the 65-foot space rock that blew up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013.
This latest rock is estimated to pass within 4,200 miles of Earth, although scientists say it could end up as far away at 170,000 miles — two-thirds of the distance from Earth to the moon.
Either way, the asteroid will be used as a trial for NASA’s “planetary defense system.” The system is meant to be an early detector of a possible calamitous asteroid or comet, potentially allowing NASA enough time to divert it, weaken its impact — or warn us of our doom.
“The question is: How prepared are we for the next cosmic threat?” Vishnu Reddy, a professor at the University of Arizona who’s leading the asteroid observation campaign, told uanews.arizon.edu.
“So we proposed an observational campaign to exercise the network and test how ready we are for a potential impact by a hazardous asteroid.”
Details on what this system actually entails are unclear, but it will test “precise orbit determination” and “international communications,” according to NASA.
The effort involves more than a dozen observatories and labs around the world that have teamed up to “collectively learn the strengths and limitations of our near-Earth object observation capabilities,” Reddy said.
The asteroid last whipped by Earth in 2012 at about one-fourth the distance to the moon. NASA has stressed that 2012 TC4 poses zero threat to Earth.
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