How close does an asteroid have to be to get sucked into Earth's gravity?

Answer 1

Depends on the asteroid size, direction of travel velocity of travel and proximity to the Earth.

HIt it just right and it can become aother moon.

It it just right and it goes into the air like a space ship does durring reentry.

It it wrong and the Earth will just changes it's orbit around the sun a little, maybe it slow it a tad.

These are all geomentrical and to make something happen you have to hit what is called a WINDOW

That means a small space in space in which the angle is right, the speed is right and the pull of gravity is right.

Answer 2

An asteroid is not "sucked" into Earth's gravity. Its path is just bent a bit by gravity. An asteroid needs to hit the Earth's atmosphere in order to hit the Earth, otherwise it just comes close and then goes out into space again. Even if an asteroid hit the atmosphere, it could skip off into space again -- kind of like a stone skipping across a pond.
The Earth's atmosphere goes up to about 150 miles above sea level.

Answer 3

The present Earth's Gravity field is not strong enough to intersect the Gravity field of the asteroid at that particular distance so that it would move toward the Earth. However if the asteroid would be at that critical distance it can be trapped iin the earth 's gravity field and magnetic field (especially if the Asteroid is made out of iron)
However The masses of asteroid continually increase and ,as a result expand their orbit outward,Just like the orbits of the Galaxies expand when their mass increases.

Answer 4

The Sun's gravity is pulling on you all the time, but it will not "suck you in". Solar gravity causes about 1/3 of the tidal force we get on Earth. The Moon has twice the tidal pull of the Sun and when the two are in a line, we get spring tides. When they are at right angles we get smaller "neap" tides. The Sun, if it were a solid ball you could walk on, would have over 28 times the gravity that the Earth has on its surface. If you were to orbit the Sun very closely, you could probably get within a quarter of a million kilometers or so, but you would encounter two problems. First, the photosphere supports huge clouds of plasma that can reach far into space, and you will likely feel some deceleration from passing through the material, like passing through the upper atmosphere of Earth on reentry. Second, the heat would destroy your craft unless you could reflect most of it and insulate the ship very well. Another potential problem is the magnetic field - it is powerful and complex, so it might induce large currents in your spacecraft if it were made of metal. This would slow your travel and make you drop closer to the Sun. So we see a couple of effects that would cause your ship to get closer to the Sun, but they are not related to gravity. Friction from plasma and resistance from the generator effect from the magnetic field would both rob your ship of forward movement.

Answer 5

Much closer than the moon. It depends on a lot of things, like the size and speed of the asteroid in question. But you can rest assured that a random asteroid out in the asteroid belt won't just randomly move towards us.

Answer 6

It depends on the orbit and speed of the asteroid.
It could actually come within a few hundred miles then continue on to outer space.
It could be thousands of miles away and with the right trajectory and speed would impact the earth.

Answer 7

its a matter of speed and the path it approaches.
normally asteroids travel too fast to get into orbit or being consumed by our planet.
what happens in most cases is that the asteroid's path is slightly modified while passing.
chances are small that a pebble is slow enough to be consumed.

Answer 8

It depends on the speed and trajectary of the body, but most importantly it depends on the weight and density of the asteroid body, seeing as the gravitational forces between two bodies are directly proporsional to it's weight.

Answer 9

Too Close!