NASA is eyeing an asteroid that will make a close pass of Earth on Thursday (28). Space rock 2008 AG33 is up to 780 meters long, twice the size of the Eiffel Tower. Fortunately, it is expected to pass at a safe distance and pose no threat to our planet.
The asteroid has been added to the database Dice NASA’s “Close Approaches”, which tracks thousands of so-called near-Earth objects (NEOs). According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the rock is traveling at 37,000 km/h – 13 times faster than a bullet.
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It will pass about 3.2 million kilometers from Earth – in space terms it is very close. Any fast-moving object that comes within 7.48 million kilometers of us is considered “potentially dangerous” by cautious space organizations.
Thursday’s asteroid was discovered in January 2008 by asteroid researchers at the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, Arizona. Its last pass by Earth was in March 2015. The asteroid passes our planet during its orbit of the Sun approximately once every seven years.
It is one of more than 2,000 asteroids, comets and other NEOs being tracked by experts 24/7. They are monitored to give us early warning if a space rock changes onto a collision course with our planet.
Earth hasn’t seen an apocalyptic-scale asteroid since the monster that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. However, the smallest ones capable of flattening an entire city do fall to Earth every now and then. A rock measuring a few hundred meters devastated 1300 km² of forest near Tunguska, Siberia, on June 30, 1908.
Fortunately, NASA doesn’t believe any of the NEOs it has its sights on are on a collision course with our planet. This could change in the coming months or years, however, as the space agency frequently reviews the predicted trajectories of objects.
Astronomers may in the future discover a gigantic rock that their telescopes had previously alluded to, although NASA believes it has found 90% of potential planet killers in our vicinity.
“NASA does not know of any asteroids or comets currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is very small,” says NASA.
“Actually, as far as we know, no large object is likely to hit Earth anytime in the next few hundred years.”
Even if one of them hit our planet, the vast majority of asteroids would not eliminate life as we know it. “Global catastrophes” are only triggered when objects more than 880 meters in diameter collide with Earth, according to NASA.
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