Is COVID-19 Just A Warmup For Asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2)? Asteroid 52768

While COVID-19 wreaked havoc around the globe, many of our readers wondered if the government lockdown orders weren’t a precursor to something bigger.  We have alluded to the government’s desire to see all fifty states issue “shelter-in-place” orders on their own accord without a federal decree.  This gives the federal government confidence as it moves forward that the states might do their own thing, but they are still very much in the fold when it comes to the real power infrastructure that runs America and the globe.  While that goal has still eluded them for now, many are now looking to a new potential threat that could really be the finishing move for this social experiment.

Meet asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2).  This asteroid is the kind of beast that you hear about on those apocalyptic doomsday documentaries.  This is the “big one.”  At two miles wide, a direct hit from this thing would probably be a dinosaur-like end to human civilization as we know it.

This space rock moves at about 20,000 miles per hour.  NASA says it will pass very close to the Earth on April 29, right around the time COVID-19 should be peaking in many places.  What does very close mean?  Well, 3.9 million miles is the approximation.

Is it a threat?  Well, the projections indicate that it is an astronomical close shave, but not a threat unless something made it change direction at the last moment.  This is deemed by the experts to be extremely unlikely.

Many in conspiracy circles are now tying the asteroid to everything else that is happening in the world right now.  The insinuation here is that there will be a full-on federal lockdown blamed on the coronavirus, but really in response to the imminent impact of asteroid 52768.  This could even be a full martial law declaration.

Here at the CSC, we try to filter through the you-know-what, and in this case, it doesn’t look like these theories hold a lot of water.  Ultimately, we are a lot more likely to be pounded by an asteroid that no one had any clue was coming, and if NASA thought there was any reason to think this may be a real possible danger, they would have never said a word about it.  They are right about that, by the way.  You see what society was reduced to by the threat of COVID-19, with massive hoarding of toilet paper and other basic necessities, stressing international supply chains like has not been seen since the last World War.

So, whether on April 29 you are worried about COVID-19, severe weather, or a human civilization-ending asteroid impact, better just stay inside until it passes.

Enjoy some other takes and information we perused on the Internet in making the determinations you see in this article.

The Biggest Asteroid To Fly By This Year Will Zoom Past Earth Next Month Asteroid 52768 Nasa

SmartNews Keeping you current

During its visit, the asteroid, called (52768) 1998 OR2, will remain almost 4 million miles away from Earth

The trajectory of asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2), which approaches the orbits of both Earth and Mars. (JPL Small Body Database)

smithsonianmag.com

March 5, 2020

Next month, Earth will be paid a visit from an old cosmic friend: a two-mile-wide asteroid called (52768) 1998 OR2 that will come within about 4 million miles of our planet. This behemoth will be the largest asteroid to swoop in close to Earth’s orbit in 2020, zooming by at almost 20,000 miles per hour, according to Prabhjote Gill at .

Known to researchers since July 1998, this massive space rock offers skygazers the chance to scope out an object that NASA has previously designated “,” so named because they occasionally pass near Earth’s orbit and are large enough to cause serious damage on impact.

That said, scientists have known for decades that (52768) 1998 OR2 poses no immediate threat; experts estimate its closest approach will happen on April 16, 2079, when it swoops about 1 million miles from Earth, according to a maintained by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. (For perspective, the moon is about four times closer.)

Most of the time, however, the asteroid is careening about on a that takes it even further out into the solar system, sometimes almost into Jupiter’s neck of the woods. (52768) 1998 OR2 needs three years and eight months to complete a lap around the sun, and may actually be more likely to have a close brush with Mars than Earth.

Still, keeping close tabs on asteroids like (52768) 1998 OR2 can help NASA prep for future encounters with other stuff in space. To date, the agency has identified .

And the agency’s capacity for NEO detection is only growing. One ongoing mission, OSIRIS-REx, will likely return a sample of the Near-Earth asteroid Bennu in Chile, set to achieve first light in 2021.

Sussing out a NEO’s size, mass and composition, among other traits, could help engineers calculate the amount of energy needed to deflect it off an Earthbound path, should it come concerningly close. To test this possibility, NASA’s mission will soon send a spacecraft to deliberately crash into a 500-foot-wide moonlet locked into orbit with an asteroid called Didymos and attempt to change its trajectory.

“It's an exciting time for planetary defense,” Ed Lu, executive director of the Asteroid Institute, tells CNN. “We are on the verge of an absolute flood of new observations that will allow us to track 10 times more asteroids than we’ve ever tracked before.”

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