World Asteroid Day 2023: Know all you need to know about small, rocky objects that orbit the sun

The annual World Asteroid Day is celebrated on June 30 in the honour of the Tunguska event in 1908, when a meteor air burst ravaged a pine forest covering over 2,000 square kilometres (500,000 acres) in central Siberia, Russia. The Tunguska asteroid event marked the greatest known asteroid impact on Earth.

The purpose of World Asteroid Day is to educate the general public about the danger posed by asteroid impacts and the crisis communication measures that must be taken worldwide in the event of a credible near-Earth object (NOE) catastrophe. An asteroid or comet that passes close to Earth’s orbit is the NEO. More than 16 000 Near Earth Asteroids have been discovered, according to the NASA Center for NEO Studies.

What are Asteroids?

Small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun are called asteroids. They are remnants of the solar system’s formation approximately 46 billion years ago. Despite this, they are much smaller than planets but still orbit the Sun. Every asteroids is unique. They have barbed and sporadic shapes. The majority of asteroids are composed of various types of rocks; however, some contain clays or metals like nickel and iron. Our solar system is home to many asteroids. The majority of them live in the main asteroid belt, which is the area between Mars and Jupiter’s orbits.

History of International Asteroid Day:

The Asteroid Day was helped to establish in 2014 (the year after the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor air burst) by prestigious cosmologist Stephen Peddling, Apollo 9 space explorer Corroded Schweickart, astrophysicist Brian May and some others. Over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013, an extremely large fireball with a speed of 18.6 kilometers per second entered the atmosphere and disintegrated. As indicated by NASA, the width of the space rock was assessed at 18 meters and it’s mass at 11,000 tons. The absolute effect energy of the Chelyabinsk Fireball was 440 kilotons.

Word Asteroid Day was established by a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2016. The occasion plans to bring issues to light about space rocks and how can be safeguarded the Earth, its families, networks, and people in the future from a disastrous occasion.

Significance of International Asteroid Day:

This day highlights the events of 1908 at Tunguska and 2013 at Chelyabinsk in recorded history and serves as a reminder of the devastating effects that asteroids can have on Earth. The horrendous effect of a space rock on earth can comprehend from the way that around quite a while back a chain response began by a space rock influence prompted the elimination of the dinosaurs and impacted all life on The planet. Since asteroids formed concurrently with other objects in our solar system, these space rocks can provide scientists with a wealth of information about the history of planets and the sun.

Additionally, today is an ideal day to consider measures to protect the planet from the harmful effects of asteroids. Researchers can find out about space rocks by concentrating on shooting stars: smidgens of space rocks that have flown through our environment and arrived on Earth’s surface.