NASA Tracking an Asteroid Likely To Collide With Earth on Feb 14, 2046

NASA is currently monitoring the asteroid 2023 DW. It will be close to Earth on February 14, 2046 and poses a slight threat of crashing into Earth. 

2023 DW is an asteroid with an estimated diameter of 49.29m and a distance of 0.12 astronomical units from Earth. 

It takes approximately 271 days for one solar orbit to complete and the current velocity of the Asteroid relative to the Sun is 24.63 km/s. 2023 DW is 0.49 AU away from the Sun. 

According to the Torino Scale, 2023 DW has been given a ranking 1 which means that it is not in any significant danger. The Risk List includes 1,448 asteroids. All of them have a scale ranking of 0, except for 2023 DW.

Ceres is the largest asteroid in our solar system. It measures 939 kilometers in diameter.  According to NASA, an asteroid with a diameter of around 96 kilometers could be enough to completely extinguish life on Earth, and smaller asteroids can still cause considerable damage. 

NASA not only uses its space telescopes and observatories like the NEOWISE to observe and study distant asteroids, but also a variety of ground-based telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) located in the Antofagasta Region of the Atacama Desert in Chile. 

NASA has a new impact monitoring program which uses an algorithm called Sentry-II, to calculate the impact risks of Near-Earth Objects. Nearly 28,000 near-Earth asteroids were discovered so far using various technology instruments.