Gigantic Asteroid can be a Potential Danger to Earth

The US space agency expected the large space rock to fly by Earth at a “close” distance and space fans were able to watch it live. Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) is said to be up to 4,265 feet wide, making it almost three times as big as the Empire State Building, but it was not expected to hit Earth and didn’t do so on Friday, March 4.

Giuseppe Piazzi, an Italian priest, and astronomer, accidentally found Ceres, the first and most enormous Asteroid, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter, while drawing a star map in 1801. While being categorized as a dwarf planet today, Ceres is responsible for a quarter of the mass of all known in or around the main belt.

NASA has been leading a program to find and track near-Earth Asteroid since around 2000. According to CNEOS, programs like the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona and the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii specialize in locating and have identified hundreds.

Asteroid are found mostly in three areas of the solar system. The majority of  are found in a large ring between Mars and Jupiter’s orbits. More than 200 bigger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter are found in this primary belt. According to NASA, the belt includes between 1.1million and 1.9million Asteroid more significant than one kilometer (3,281 feet) in diameter, as well as millions of smaller ones.