Planetary defense

A skyscraper-sized asteroid will cross near Earth on September 14, according to the British newspaper Independent, quoted by BNT.

The asteroid is named 2000 QW7 and is between 290 and 650 meters in size. The celestial body is moving at 23 170 kilometers per hour and will travel 5.3 million kilometers from our planet.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed on asteroid Bennu last week, and already it's found water on the minor planet, reported Geek.com

Early data from the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission revealed water locked inside Bennu.

A pair of robot rovers have landed on an asteroid and begun a survey, Japan's space agency said Saturday, as it conducts a mission aiming to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

The rover mission marks the world's first moving, robotic observation of an asteroid surface, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Two years after launching from Florida, a NASA spacecraft is closing in on an ancient asteroid, Bennu, for a sample of space dust that could reveal clues to the start of life in the solar system.

The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, has even snapped its first, blurry pic of the cosmic body, which is about the size of a small mountain, about 500 yards (meters) in diameter.

A massive asteroid estimated to be 2.7 miles wide is set to make a ‘relatively close encounter’ with Earth on September 1.
Dubbed ‘Florence,’ the huge space rock will pass just 4.4 million miles from our planet – or, about 18 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

A house-sized asteroid due to pass Earth in October is currently “damn close”, the European Space Agency says.

The plot of the 1998 film Armageddon involves a team of expert oil drillers being sent into space, to land on an asteroid on a trajectory to earth, in order to blow it up.

If that precis weren’t sufficient, here’s the Bruce Willis-laden trailer:

Nasa, because the world is reality TV these days, has announced their plan for a similar scenario.

An asteroid the size of a mountain is about to shave by Earth, in a rare type of flyby that will not be seen for another decade, astronomers said Jan. 26.
      
The asteroid, known as 2004 BL86, runs no risk of a colliding with Earth and will be about three times farther than the Moon when it passes.