NASA warned that Earth is about to experience a near-collision with a massive asteroid before Thanksgiving. According to the agency's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the approaching asteroid is almost twice as big as the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The incoming asteroid has been identified by the agency as 481394 (2006 SF6) . As noted by CNEOS, the space rock is currently moving towards Earth with an average speed of almost 18,000 miles per hour. The asteroid-hunting agency estimated that the space rock has a diameter of around 2,034 feet.
In case you are keeping track:
An asteroid as large as 2,000 feet across will speed past Earth later this month – BGR
I know, 0.029 sure sounds like a close miss — and in the grand scheme of things, you could argue that it is — but astronomical units (au) are huge. 1au is the average distance between the Earth and our Sun, which is nearly 93 million miles. That means 2006 SF6 will still be around 2.7 million miles away from our planet when it passes by.
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An Asteroid the Size of a Skyscraper Just Flew by Earth (Video) | Space
An enormous asteroid flew by Earth today (Oct. 25), and you can watch it zip by in a video from the Virtual Telescope Project.
Asteroid 1998 HL1 was 3.86 million miles (6.21 million kilometers) away from Earth — about 10 times the average distance to the moon — when it makes its closest approach at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 GMT), according to NASA .
Video: Giant Asteroid 1998 HL1 Seen by Virtual Telescope Project
Related: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)
Asteroid shock: Space rock travelling 40,000 kilometres per hour to flyby Earth | Science | News
One LD is the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 384,400 km – so 2019 SU8 will come within 192,000 kilometres of our planet on October 29.
While this may seem like a sizeable distance, it is close enough for NASA to sit up and take notice and class it as a Near Earth Object (NEO) and allow the space agency to study the history of our solar system.
“The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago.
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Asteroid alert: A large 20,000MPH asteroid will skim Earth on Halloween - Will it hit?
Astronomers have dubbed the rocky body Asteroid 2019 UJ3 after its discovery on October 19 this year.
The space rock is an Apollo-type asteroid, meaning it crosses Earth’s orbit on a path similar to Asteroid 1862 Apollo.
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NEOs are all comets and asteroids on orbital trajectories that come astronomically close to our planet.
But if an NEO is big enough to warrant interest from NASA, the space agency will keep a watchful eye on its estimated path.
NASA shock: Scientists shocked - asteroid flyby is 'closest in history' without warning
NASA’s asteroid warning system failed to pick up one of the “closest ever” asteroids to flyby the Earth, sparking panic among officials. The terrifying near-Earth asteroid, identified as C0PPEV1, flew closer to Earth than telecommunication satellites on Thursday morning. Questions are being asked as to why NASA did not issue a warning about the incoming asteroid.
The C0PPEV1 - since renamed 2019 UN 13 - travelled 3,852 miles (6,200km) above the Earth, which makes it one of the closest near-misses in recorded history.
Collision liquified the 4th-largest asteroid, turning it into a dwarf planet | Ars Technica
We know Hygiea has experienced a collision in the past, because we can see its remains. An entire family of small asteroids are found in orbits that suggest they originated from the asteroid about two billion years ago.
Instead, the body they imaged was remarkably smooth and nearly spherical—its average radius is 217km and likely only varies from 225km to 212km. It was also rotating at roughly twice the rate that we thought it had been.
None of that is quite what was expected: "None of our images and their associated contours revealed the large impact basin expected from the large size of the Hygiea [asteroid] family."
Asteroid warning: Asteroids hiding near Jupiter could come crashing into Earth | Science | News |
Some of these asteroids, the research published in the online journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society continued, could end up on a collision with Earth.
Kenta Oshima, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, wrote in the research paper that the objects which are of the biggest worry are the ones that are on a high-inclination of the solar plane.
The solar plane is the relatively flat and equal level which planets orbit the Sun on – anything above this has a high-inclination.
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