Huge Asteroid Will Pass By The Earth At Half The Distance To The Moon, NASA Warns
NASA just issued a warning saying that an asteroid which is about the size of a 10-story building will be passing by the earth at half the distance to the Moon.
The Independent reveals that Asteroid 2019 GC6 will pass within 136,000 miles of Earth today, safely avoiding a devastating collision.
NASA has also warned that the orbital trajectory of the asteroid means that it could still pose a risk in the future.
According to the estimations, the celestial body is somewhere between 7.5 meters and 30 meters in length.
This asteroid has been discovered on April 9th by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.
After it has been spotted, the scientists at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California placed it on a list of asteroids that risk colliding with Earth in the next 100 years.
“It is difficult to predict its exact path accurately, but it is set to pass close to the Earth again in 2034, 2041 and 2048,” writes the Independent.
Space debris hits our planet all the time
The online publication writes that it’s natural for rogue space debris to hit our planet and it’s no wonder considering that tons of cosmic material pass through the atmosphere every day.
But it’s good to know that the vast majority of it burns before it reaches the ground. On the other hand, every decade or so there’s an asteroid which does collide with our planet.
“If humanity does not want to go the way of the dinosaurs, we need to study an event like this in detail,” Professor Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California said at the time.
“Chelyabinsk serves as a unique calibration point for high-energy meteorite impact events for our future studies.”
But due to their relatively tiny size, asteroids are notoriously tricky to spot and they often go undetected until a few days before they pass/collide with Earth.
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.
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