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Picture: After a ten-month journey, the NASA craft smashed into Dimorphos, a 170-meter across asteroid orbiting another slightly larger asteroid named Didymos. The impact generated a plume 10,000 kilometers long that is still visible to astronomers.
As Jews around the world look to the heavens on Yom Kippur, four asteroids will fly by, unseen and the remains of another asteroid will drift past.
The asteroids 2022 SM21 and 2022 SO11 will pass by the earth on Tuesday night, the beginning of the Yom Kippur holiday. 2018 VG and 2022 SJ28 will make their passes the following day.
SM21, estimated to be anywhere between 9 and 20 meters in width, is expected to pass at a distance of 1.86 million kilometers while traveling at a speed of 54,252 kilometers per hour. 2022 SO11 is house-sized and will pass within 1.1 million kilometers of our planet. The next day, the bus-sized 2018 VG will pass within seven million kilometers of the earth. The 18-meter wide SJ28 will pass within 5.7 million kilometers of the earth.
It is also interesting to note that on September 26, the holiday of Rosh Hashana, NASA carried out its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The DART mission used what is called the kinetic impactor technique which involves using a solar-powered electric propulsion system to smash the spacecraft into the asteroid in the hopes of deflecting it into a different trajectory, steering it away from the Earth’s orbital path.
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