NASA's urgent warning as stadium-sized asteroid 2019 OR1 approaches Earth at 48,168 km/h

The dangerously close encounters between asteroids and Earth appear to have restarted. Observatories and telescopes like Pan-STARRS, the Catalina Sky Survey, and the NEOWISE telescope provide data that NASA uses to track these asteroids. This equipment is divided into parts that are on the ground and parts that are in the air.

The Planetary Defense Coordination Office of NASA has issued alerts for the asteroid 2019 OR1. The 770-foot asteroid is expected to make a close approach to Earth on November 21 at a distance of 4.3 million kilometres from our planet. The asteroid is already travelling at an incredible 48,168 km/hr toward Earth. Although it is not expected that this asteroid will collide with Earth, even a slight deviation in its path caused by contact with the planet's gravitational field might cause catastrophic changes in its course.

The Planetary Science Division at NASA's headquarters office in Washington has established a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which it is in charge of. A timely identification of potentially hazardous objects (PHOS), such as asteroids and comets, whose trajectories are predicted to bring them within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth, is the responsibility of the PDCO (5 million miles or 8 million kilometres).

To combat such dangers from orbit, NASA recently finished the DART mission. To determine whether it was possible to change an asteroid's trajectory, NASA launched the Dart mission. As a result of the test's findings, the world made its first stride toward creating the technology required to prevent any sizable rock from crashing to Earth.