NASA just reported that an asteroid just skimmed Earth around 1:53 am GMT (UTC) today, March 22nd.
The asteroid reportedly flew by our planet closer than the moon on a trajectory that is subbed by NASA as a Close Earth Approach.
Express.co.uk notes that “As this happened, the space rock breached incredible speeds of 5.37km per second or 12,012.45mph (19,3332kph). According to NASA’s asteroids experts at the California based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) the asteroid was first encountered on March 9 this year.”
Asteroid 2019 EA2
The asteroid was classed as an Aten-tye Near-Earth Object aka NEO. NEOs are comets and asteroids on trajectories that are cutting into our planet’s orbit of the Sun.
Sometimes, asteroids such as the EA2 come really close to our home planet, but of course, they don’t always strike it.
Today, this asteroid managed to miss our planet from an estimated distance of so-called 0.80 Lunar Distances (LD).
The same online publication mentioned above notes that “this is a distance of approximately 190,560 miles (306,675 km) or 80 percent of the Moon’s average distance from the Earth.”
They continue and explain that “NASA further estimates EA2 measures somewhere in the range of 59ft to 134.5ft (18m to 41m) in diameter.”
Astronomer Eddie Irizarry of Astronomical Society of the Caribbean told EarthSky.org said that the space rock is roughly house-sized.
He said: “The space rock has an estimated size of 82ft (25m) in diameter, which means it’s slightly larger than the asteroid that penetrated the atmosphere over the skies of Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013.”
NASA missed a massive meteor explosion last year
In other news, we recently reported data about a mindblowing meteor explosion dating back in 2018 which was missed by NASA.
US Air Force recorded an enormous meteor explosion back in December 2018. By the look of things, a giant space rock has exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere.
I have been blogging and posting articles for over eight years, but my passion for writing dates back in 2000. I am especially enthusiastic about technology, science, and health-related issues. When I’m not researching and writing the latest news, I’m either watching sci-fi and horror movies or checking out places worth visiting and building deep memories for later in life. I believe in empathy and continually improving myself.