The asteroid came from the direction of the Sun and was invisible to the equipment until it flew past the Earth at a distance of only 3000 km

A rather modest size asteroid flew in from the direction of the Sun and swept past the Earth at a distance of only 3000 km from the surface (the third place in the closest approach) in the entire history of observations.

What is surprising is not the size and not even the distance to the Earth of the asteroid that flew by, but the fact that scientists did not know about its existence exactly until this pebble flew past.

The asteroid threat and unknown objects in the solar system

An agency like NASA has been tracking outer space for quite some time, including looking for potentially dangerous asteroids for our Earth.

It is already known about a huge number of such objects and most of them are harmless due to their modest size or distant orbits.

But research continues, and scientists turned their attention to a rather modest object (only two meters in diameter), which was named 2021 UA1, and was in third place in the distance of approach to the planet in the entire history observation.

Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it was completely invisible to telescopes, as it flew up to the Earth from the direction of our Sun. The object flew at a distance of 3,000 km from the surface, which is significantly above the orbit of the International Space Station, but at the same time below the orbits of many communications satellites.

Of course, if 2021 UA1 entered the atmosphere, it would have burned up without a trace and would not cause any harm on Earth, but the very fact of its unnoticed arrival makes one think about the fact that in exactly the same way an already significantly larger asteroid can fly up, and its orbit can be more dangerous than u 2021 UA1.

In order to "close this white spot", scientists will have to create special telescopes that will be able to observe objects from the direction of the Sun.

Well, let's hope that while scientists are busy solving this problem, large enough asteroids will not come close to Earth in the near future.

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