# @unoosa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DLhVc-Itnyl
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35584104-unoosa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/0785562c26.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-06-30T10:02:25.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UNOOSA (@unoosa) — https://gondola.cc/unoosa

## Caption

☄️💘Which one of these space rocks is your type? On this International Asteroid Day, swipe through & discover a small fraction of the 1 million+ asteroids that roam the solar system. Whereas most of them will never cross our paths, about 37000 of them, called near earth objects, occasionally cross Earth's orbit. 

🌠🦖Small asteroids are harmless, burning up in the atmosphere and lighting up our night skies as shooting stars. Larger asteroids can be dangerous. Most scientists believe a massive asteroid 10-15 kilometres wide caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. On 30 June 1908, a 50-60 meter wide asteroid crashed in Tunguska, Siberia, flattening 80 million trees. 

🔭🚨Thanks to optical and radio telescopes, most asteroid collisions with Earth can be predicted ahead of time. The International Asteroid Warning Network (#IAWN) works with #COPUOS and #UNOOSA to detect potential asteroid collisions and flybys and inform member states. 

🤏🌍There is currently no big asteroid on a collision course with us. On Friday 13 April 2029, a 450 meter long asteroid called 99942 Apophis will fly by earth, coming closer to us than many of our satellites. On 22 December 2032, asteroid 2024 YR4 will come close as well. In February 2025, it triggered the first-ever UNOOSA asteroid notification. Though a collision with Earth has been ruled out, it still has a 4% chance of hitting the Moon. 

🪐🛰️The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG), which also convenes around COPUOS, brings together 19 space agencies & institutions to improve research, impact mitigation, and possible deflection missions. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) targeted asteroid Dimorphos to test our ability to deviate asteroids. ESA's Hera mission, currently en route to Dimorphos, will evaluate how successful that was, and whether such an idea can be used to protect earth from other asteroids. 

1️⃣Learn more about asteroids & what we can do about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9rWvpZXY58

 2️⃣Check out our work on planetary defense & near earth objects here: https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/topics/neos/index.html

📸 Credit: ESA & NASA

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- **Likes:** 94
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## Tags

copuos, unoosa, iawn

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