The good news is that it should swing past our home planet (Earth) with no chance of a direct hit.
It will be travelling at a mind-blowing 10.88 kilometers per second which is around 40,000 kilometres per hour.
NASA says although the asteroid will fly by at a distance of 1.7 million kilometres, it is close enough to be considered a near-Earth object (NEO).
"NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth's neighbourhood." NASA explains.
Not to change the topic here:
Asteroid comes closer to Earth than many communications satellites orbit - MarketWatch
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A recently discovered asteroid the size, if not shape, of a bus reportedly zoomed safely past Earth on Thursday.
The asteroid came within just more than 13,000 miles of Earth, well below many of the communications satellites orbiting the planet, scientists said. The closest approach had been expected to occur Thursday morning over the southeastern Pacific Ocean.
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The Margin (Aug. 29): 'Finally some good news': An asteroid is heading our way on the eve of the presidential election
Surprise! Asteroid Bennu sports pieces of another space rock | Space
Pieces of the asteroid Vesta somehow made their way to a much smaller world, the space rock Bennu, which is currently hosting a NASA spacecraft.
Bennu's "rubble pile" appearance has puzzled scientists for nearly two years, since the 2018 arrival of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft , known formally as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer. The spacecraft will attempt to snatch a sample from Bennu in October and, if all goes according to plan, will deliver it on Earth in 2023 for more analysis.
Don’t worry about a car-sized asteroid that will be near Earth the day before the election
An asteroid is due to pass extremely close to Earth the day before Election Day in November, bringing new meaning to the phrase "Rock the Vote."
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The asteroid's name is 2018 VP1 and it will zoom past Earth on Nov. 2, one day before Americans vote for in the 2020 general election.
In a year where unpredictable disasters seem routine, NASA wants you to know that the rock poses no threat to Earth.
It currently has just a 0.41 percent chance of entering our planet's atmosphere, but if it did, NASA says the asteroid is too small to do any damage. The asteroid is only 2 meters, or 6.5 feet across, making it slightly smaller than a compact car.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Fossil carbon burned by asteroid impact contributed to dinosaur extinction | Penn State University
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — An asteroid impact 66 million years ago may have released trillions of pounds of partially burned fossil carbon into Earth's upper atmosphere as a cloud of black soot, significantly contributing to the ensuing global darkness, cooling and mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, according to an international team of scientists.
Traces of burned organic material are found in the global geologic record of the Chicxulub impact, which is thought to have occurred when an asteroid slammed into a shallow sea in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula, just off the coast of Mexico.
Asteroid tracker: Space rock bigger than St Paul's Cathedral to fly by | Science | News |
A Near Earth Object (NEO) will zoom by Earth today, with NASA designating the object 2020 RJ3. The asteroid is up to a staggering 120 metres in size, making it bigger than St Paul's Cathedral which sits at the hear of London.
NASA is monitoring the approach of the asteroid, with data revealing it is flying at an astronomical 15.5 kilometres per second, or more than 55,000 kilometres per hour.
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Nonetheless, it is considered an NEO by NASA, as it passes through the orbit of Earth's journey around the Sun.
Amateur Astronomer Discovers Large Near-Earth Asteroid
Earth lost 60 per cent of its atmosphere during asteroid impact - BBC Science Focus Magazine
Earth may have lost up to 60 per cent of its atmosphere in a collision that led to the formation of the Moon more than four billion years ago, scientists believe.
The research, led by Durham University, is based on 300 computer simulations looking at the consequences of the impact of collisions on rocky planets with thin atmospheres.
The team say the findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters , could be used by astronomers who are trying to learn more about the Moon, which was thought to have formed following a collision between a Mars-sized rock and Earth .
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