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Asteroid NASA redirected will pass by Earth this weekend along with 4 others

Asteroids are typically composed of rocky, dusty, metallic materials

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officials said five asteroids will pass directly by Earth Friday and Saturday, including one the space agency redirected last September.

Dimorphos, the massive asteroid NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into last year as part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), is one of those five.

NASA’s Asteroid Watch dashboard notes that one of the asteroids is the size of a bus, three are comparable in size to planes, and the largest, Dimorphos, is the size of a stadium.

Footage in the media player at the top of this article shows DART purposefully impacting Dimorphos in Sept. 2022 in order to move it.

Asteroids are typically composed of rocky, dusty, and metallic materials and most orbit within the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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