Sheikh Hamdan captured footage of Jupiter as its closest point to Earth in half a century — with the Burj Khalifa in the frame. The Crown Prince of Dubai shared the video with his millions of followers on Instagram on Monday night. “Burj Khalifa meets the king of planets! The planet's closest approach to Earth in 59 years,” Sheikh Hamdan wrote. In the past 12 hours, Jupiter came closer to Earth than at any point since 1963. The largest planet in our solar system, the gas giant was in 'opposition', meaning Earth is directly between it and the sun. But the occasion is no close call. There were still 590.6 million kilometres between Earth and Jupiter at that point, <a href="https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2022/09/16/jupiter-to-reach-opposition-closet-approach-to-earth-in-70-years/">according to Nasa</a>, with Jupiter a tiny dot in the sky. Jupiter is at opposition about every 13 months — but neither Earth nor Jupiter orbits the sun in a perfect circle, so occasions like last night are rare. In other space news, Nasa deliberately <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/the-americas/2022/09/12/how-to-watch-a-nasa-spacecraft-crash-into-an-asteroid-live-on-september-26/">rammed a spacecraft into an asteroid</a> to deflect its orbit, in a key test of their ability to stop cosmic objects from crashing into Earth. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spaceship, launched from California last November, struck the asteroid at about 22,500 kilometres per hour. The mission marks the first step towards a world capable of defending itself from a future existential threat.
