Did you know that as of 2024, there are over 30,000 known so-called Earth-grazers (NEOs or Near Earth Objects)?

Earth-grazers are asteroids whose orbits intersect with that of Earth. In the future, these Earth-grazers could potentially collide with Earth.

About 2,500 of these Earth-grazers are considered potentially hazardous because they are larger than 140 meters and have an orbit that brings them closer to Earth than 0.05 AU (astronomical units). Moreover, it is estimated that there are about 11 million Earth-grazers with a diameter between 25 and 140 meters, although only about 1% of these have been discovered so far.

In February 2011, a one-meter-diameter asteroid passed very close to Earth. The distance was less than 5,500 km. If an asteroid of such small size were to hit Earth, it would immediately burn up in the atmosphere.

The discovery and tracking of these objects is a joint effort of various observatories worldwide, including the ATLAS system in Hawaii and the NEOWISE space telescope. These efforts are crucial for predicting possible impacts and taking measures to protect Earth from large asteroids.

The image accompanying this article is from freepik.com