Lemme see. Those huge rocks hurtling through the solar system are usually hitting anywhere from 25,000 to 160,000 miles per hour. If the satellite spots this rock when it's a million miles away, that gives us maybe 40 hours to perhaps only six and a half hours to figure out what to do.
Somehow I don't find that very comforting.
Somehow I don't find that very comforting.
A spacecraft is currently on its journey towards an asteroid, where it will collect and return samples that experts believe may hold the building blocks of life.
The asteroid, Bennu, crosses Earth's orbit once every six years and is set to pass between the moon and our planet in 2135.
Scientists are worried the 0.3 mile (500-metre) wide asteroid's orbit could be tweaked by Earth's gravity as it passes by, causing it to smash into our planet later in the century.Story here:
Now Nasa has explained exactly how the spacecraft is built to be able to see the asteroid from as far away as a million miles (1.6 million km) and as close as just a few feet.
