Gerrard Kaonga
A massive asteroid is set to zoom past Earth today as NASA confirms it is potentially hazardous.
Looking forward to the weekend? Well, just so you know, there is a ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid the size of the Empire State Building moving unnervingly close to the Earth.
NASA confirmed earlier this week, through its Asteroid Watch department, that a space rock will be missing the planet by 1.7 million miles today (2 February).
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The asteroid 2008 OS7 will speed past us at about 18.2 km/s or 40,700mph. Just for comparison, a speeding bullet travels between 600 and 2,000 mph.
The asteroid has been estimated to be between 690 and 1,570 feet across, according to data from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.
The Empire State Building is about 1,250 feet so the rock is quite sizeable.
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Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in the UK, explained why people shouldn’t worry about the upcoming asteroid, however.
Speaking to Newsweek, he said: “A potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) is one that has an orbit intersecting the Earth's orbit around the Sun by less than 0.05 astronomical units (1 AU is the distance to the Sun), that's just over 4.5 million miles.
“It also has to have an absolute brightness of 22.0 or less (lower values of the magnitude are brighter = larger objects), i.e., an asteroid (or comet) that would cause significant regional damage if it hit the Earth.
“Not all NEOs are potentially hazardous, but all hazardous objects are NEOs."
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Minjae Kim, a research fellow at the University of Warwick, reinforced Barstow’s comments and said the world need not worry about the incoming 2008 OS7.
“2008 OS7, a very small asteroid whose orbit intersects with that of Earth, has been classified as a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA),” she said.
“We don't need to worry about it too much, as this asteroid will not enter Earth's atmosphere, while this will still approach close to the Earth.
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"There are more than millions of asteroids in our Solar System, of which ~2,350 asteroids have been classified as PHAs. The next significant approach to Earth by a PHA will be the 99942 Apophis on 14 April, 2029.”
“[The asteroid is] in the category of a small to moderately-sized asteroid, roughly equivalent to the size of a football field.
“Unfortunately, asteroids are generally too faint to have been detected by the current techniques and surveys, so it's very hard to see by our naked eye.
"The only asteroids at all visible to the naked eye so far are Pallas and Vesta, having diameters of about 500 km.”