Nasa said a large asteroid, which is comparable in size to the tallest building on Earth, was reportedly heading towards the planet in mid-December.
Nasa’s asteroid tracker refers to this as 163899 (2003 SD220), a large asteroid measuring about 791 meters in diameter, almost the size of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure on Earth.
However, observations made in 2015 by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico showed that the asteroid could be much larger, at least 2 kilometers long.
NASA then came up with a different measurement, which is about 1.6 kilometers. However, current NASA estimates put the asteroid at 791 meters in diameter.
Reported Between, Monday (11/15/2021), the asteroid will fly past Earth on December 17 at a distance of about 5.4 million kilometers from the planet at a speed of 5.6 km/second.
In comparison, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is much closer than that, which is about 385,000 km. Thus, although it is classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) due to its size and proximity to Earth, it poses no threat to the planet.
In fact, NASA has declared Earth safe from asteroid impacts for the next 100 years.
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