NASA’s ‘Eyes On Asteroids’ Let’s You See Exactly How Close They Come
NASA’s web app reveals which asteroids are potentially hazardous, along with their orbits, size, distance, and when they come closest to the Earth.
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NASA has created a fantastic new web app called ‘Eyes On Asteroids’ that can run on a phone browser or computer, showing detailed information about all the asteroids that the space agency is tracking. Tracking asteroids has grown in importance as the capabilities of science have advanced, allowing enough precision to get advance warning in case of potential impacts.
While most asteroids pass by at distances so great that there is no danger to life or even property on the ground, some get within a range that warrants extra attention in case the objects break apart or collide with something in space that changes their trajectory.
NASA’s ‘Eyes On Asteroids’ allows browsing asteroids as easily as a social media feed. It’s possible to scroll through time to see the paths of multiple asteroids that are being tracked. This is a powerful app with a large amount of data, so it could take a moment to load. Once it does, the Solar System is shown with the orbits of planets and asteroids shown, as well as the paths of comets and spacecraft. Selecting any asteroid will bring up data about the diameter and distance and other details that might be of interest. Asteroid Apophis, for example, is quite large at 340 meters and will come to within 23,618 miles of Earth, closer than any potentially hazardous object of this size in recorded history.
NASA’s Current Asteroid Watch
In addition to selecting asteroids, comets, and other space objects manually, NASA’s ‘Eyes On Asteroids’ web app provides a selection of asteroids approaching the Earth in the near future. At the top of the page, selecting ‘Asteroid Watch’ will bring up a list of nearby asteroids sorted by nearest first. This list highlights the next five closest approaches, giving a live countdown, as well as the name of the asteroid, which might be a codename like 2021 XQ5, instead of a proper name which is usually reserved for more interesting asteroids.
Another tab at the top provides opportunities to learn more about asteroids in general, what NASA considers a close approach and the dangers of space objects and information about missions that are related to asteroids. A filter option at the upper-right allows the vast amount of data in the visualization to be refined to only potentially hazardous objects (PHOs), thankfully a tiny number, asteroids, and comets. NASA’s ‘Eyes On Asteroids’ is a very impressive and powerful web app that makes it easy to understand a large amount of data with a great visual interface.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/nasa-web-app-data-asteroids/