The ‘Great Pumpkin’: the asteroid that will visit Earth Halloween – Semana.com

                     Halloween is coming. And with the arrival of this celebration in which children dress up as dead, witches and ghosts trick or treating, the visit of “the Great Pumpkin” approaches.

It is not, however, a character in this pagan festival of Celtic origin: a giant asteroid is technically known as TB145, this object has an estimated 400 meters wide

This makes it 20 times bigger than the meteorite that streaked and. He exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, destroying hundreds of windows and leaving more than a thousand injured because of the debris

And his speed is also higher. while Russian meteorite entered the atmosphere at a speed of 19 kilometers per second, the “Great Pumpkin” moving at 35 km / s.

But fortunately, pass at a distance that though close in spatial terms, are considered safe for our planet.

Opportunity

Indeed, when it is at its closest point to the TB145 is 480,000 km from Earth. That is, 1.3 times the distance between the Moon and Earth.

And it will not be easily visible. “It will take at least a small telescope to see it,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for the study of the Near Earth Object of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA.

For the space agency American, however, this is a wonderful opportunity to study the asteroid, because the next time such a large object pass close to Earth will be only in August 2027.

NASA plans to image radar to analyze the surface of the object, but also to detect whether or not it is accompanied by a moon, which may provide clues about its mass and density.

“The gravitational influence of the TB145 is so small you will not have detectable effects on the Moon, or tectonic plates of the Earth tides, “NASA said in a statement.

catastrophic consequences

Fortunately, the “Great Pumpkin” will briefly crossing the sky orbit. But if Earth had been brought on its way, there had been no time to react.

“An asteroid of this size is very hard to save it with a warning of only 20 days,” he told Chodas Popular Science magazine.

If collided with Earth, a piece of rock and ice as the TB145 could cause catastrophic devastation, the researcher added.

Currently, scientists are working on plans to deflect and destroy asteroids as our planet is hit middle asteroids near de100.000 years each.

But for now, NASA says we do not have to worry about.