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Update: You can watch the asteroid’s approach for yourself in the video above. live stream From the Virtual Telescope Project starting February 2nd at 1pm ET.
A “potentially dangerous” soccer stadium-sized asteroid will safely pass Earth on Friday (February 2), making its closest approach to Earth in more than 100 years. It will also be at least several centuries before space rocks come this close to us again.
The giant asteroid, named 2008 OS7, is about 890 feet (271 meters) in diameter and will pass close to Earth at a distance of about 1.77 million miles (2.85 million kilometers). NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). By the way, this is more than seven times further away from her than the moon orbits the Earth.
According to JPL, the asteroid will travel at a speed of about 41,000 miles per hour (66,000 kilometers per hour) as it passes Earth.
Comparing the circumference of this space rock to the circumference of other asteroids, it is about half the size of the asteroid Bennu investigated by NASA. visited and collected samplesand at least 70 times smaller than the Vredefort meteorite. Largest known space rock ever to hit Earth.
Related: A “planet killer” asteroid hides in the sun’s glare. Will you be able to stop them in time?
Due to its size and proximity to Earth, this asteroid classified as potentially dangerous Despite the fact that it will never get close enough to affect our planet, according to JPL’s predictions.If a space rock were to collide with the Earth, it would be large enough to wipe out a large cityNew York etc.
However, this object is not heavy enough to be considered an object. “Planet killer” asteroidthe Vredefort meteorite and space rocks, etc. made dinosaurs extinct 66 million years ago.
NASA has identified about 25,000 potentially dangerous asteroids, but a significant percentage of them are not as large as the impending space rock. One of these deadly asteroids is expected to hit Earth every 20,000 years, Live Science previously reported.
2008 OS7 has a highly elliptical orbit, which means it doesn’t orbit evenly around it. Sun. For this reason, each time a space rock approaches the Earth, its distance from the Earth changes significantly. For example, when the asteroid approached us shortly after its discovery in 2008, it was about 55.9 million miles (90 million km) away from us, according to JPL, which is 30 million miles (30 million kilometers) from us this week. It is said to be more than twice as far away.
Scientists have only directly observed an asteroid passing close to Earth twice so far. But based on the space rock’s orbital data, JPL simulated every closest approach an asteroid has made since 1900 and predicted every closest approach made by 2198. At no other point in this nearly 300-year data set is the point at which the asteroid is expected to approach. on our planet from February 2nd of this year.
Several other asteroids have come close to or hit Earth in the past few weeks.
January 27th, Airplane-sized asteroid passes by Earth The distance is just 220,000 miles (354,000 km), which is slightly closer than the distance from Earth to the Moon. Then, on January 21, a child-sized asteroid was discovered by astronomers about three hours earlier. It exploded in the atmosphere above Germany..
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