Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids
Channel: Sights of Space
Date: 30/07/2023

Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids Pictured here are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. To investigate Earth-saving strategies, NASA successfully tested the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission last year.  Illustration Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech - Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)