Asteroid the size of a 50-story skyscraper passes near Earth today July 17, 2022

Liputan6.com, Jakarta – A asteroid The size of a 50-story skyscraper will reportedly glide past Earth on Sunday (17/7/2022), making its closest approach to our planet in nearly 100 years.

The fat space rock, dubbed 2022 KY4, will safely traverse Earth about 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers), or more than 16 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, according to NASA. Live Science.

This is much farther than the 2022 NF asteroid, which came within 56,000 miles (90,000 km) – or about 23% of the average distance between Earth and the Moon – on July 7th.

Asteroid 2022 KY4 is about 290 feet (88 meters) in diameter at its widest visible point. It travels at a speed of about 16,900 mph (27,000 km/h) – about eight times faster than an accelerating rifle bullet, according to NASA.

The space rock has made several close approaches to Earth before, most recently in 1959 and 1948. The asteroid will not make another close approach to our planet until May 2048, according to NASA calculations.

Monitored by NASA

NASA and other space agencies closely monitor thousands of near-Earth objects like this. Even if the asteroid’s trajectory places it millions of miles from our planet, there is a very small chance that the asteroid’s orbit could shift slightly after interacting with the gravity of a larger object, such as a planet; even a small shift like that could potentially put the asteroid on a collision course with Earth on a future passing flight.

Because of this, the space agency takes planetary defense very seriously.

In November 2021, NASA launched an asteroid deflecting spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which will hit the 525-foot-wide (160 m) asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022.

The collision won’t destroy the asteroid, but it might slightly change the orbital path of the space rock, Live Science previously reported.

This mission will help test the feasibility of asteroid deflection, should some future asteroids pose a danger to our planet.

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