Well, this is kinda scary!
On September 16 a large asteroid, Asteroid 2021 SG, passed just 153k miles away from Earth. The only problem was the fact that no one saw it until September 17. The asteroid was between 138 and 308 feet in diameter, roughly the size of the Statue of Liberty, and four times larger than the one that disintegrated over Russia in 2013 that injured 1500 people and broke windows in six cities.
There’s good news and bad news from NASA on this incident. The good news is that they insist their Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope would have picked the asteroid up before it reached us; the bad news is that the new telescope isn’t scheduled to launch until 2026. Scientists say no one saw this one coming because it approached the Earth from the direction of the sun.
Asteroid 2021 SG passed very close to earth on September 16 and came in undetected as it was hidden by our Sun. The asteroid posed no danger to our blue planet.#readershelf #Asteroid2021SG #Asteroid #earth pic.twitter.com/P6iiwXpuah
— Reader Shelf (@thereadershelf) September 28, 2021
Earth, we have a blindspot!
— Dr Able Lawrence🦉MD DM (@abledoc) September 22, 2021
Currently astronomers have no way of detecting asteroids and other rocks coming at earth from the direction of the sun.
It's another matter we don't have a way of stopping them even if we have a warning. @elonmusk@SpaceX https://t.co/fpwuBBLzpe
Source: Daily Mail