NASA reveals truth behind asteroid hurtling past Earth at 46,908 mph next week
NASA scientists have set out the truth about a 220-foot asteroid hurtling 'near' Earth early next week.
Naturally, talk of space rocks on a near-Earth trajectory gets the imagination going.
My mind instantly jumps to that potentially 'city-destroying' asteroid that might end up colliding with the Moon.
And then you have 16 Psyche, a deep-space asteroid made up of such valuable metals, it could hypothetically make every single one of us billionaires.
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The asteroid approaching Earth on Monday (July 28), however, is about the size of a plane, or slightly larger than the Statue of Liberty.
It's also traveling near us at a break-neck speed of 46,908 miles per hour.
Dubbed 2025 OW, the asteroid is set to pass our planet at a distance of around 393,000 miles.
That's still significantly closer than any of the four other asteroids set to make their closest approaches to Earth this week.
According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), two 'plane-sized' asteroids will pass by on Thursday July 24 and another two are due on Saturday July 26.
None of the other asteroids will come as close to Earth as 2025 OW. The nearest of the four is the 100-foot-wide 2025 OK1, which will pass at a distance of around 1,360,000 miles today.
In comparison, 2025 OW will swing by about 70 percent nearer to Earth.
This all might sound alarming, but NASA explains that that distance is roughly 1.6 times the average distance to the moon.
Hopefully, that puts your mind at rest - it sure has mine.
And, according to the scientists, these space events are nothing out of the ordinary.
Davide Farnocchia, an asteroid expert at NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) told ABC News: "Close approaches happen all the time - it's just part of the fabric of the solar system."
And while 2025 OW’s considerable size is enough to grab scientists’ attention, it’s still not something we need to worry about.
"We know exactly where it's going to be. We'll probably know where it's going to be for the next 100 years," Ian J. O'Neill, media relations specialist at NASA's JPL, said.
He added of the asteroid's near-approach: "This is very routine. If there was a threat, you would hear from us. We would always put out alerts on our planetary defense blog."
Asteroids that measure up at 3,000 feet - almost 13 times the size of 2025 OW - are the ones to worry about.
NASA reports that rocks this large could cause 'global devastation and possibly the collapse of civilisation.'
Fortunately, they only impact Earth every 700,000 years. So unless the universe is running ahead of schedule, we’re in the clear.
Ellie Kemp