An asteroid the size of a football stadium is passing our planet. It is supposed to get closer to Earth on Friday. Experts call such asteroids “city killers”, but according to NASA there is no danger of a collision with our planet.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA discovered in space the giant asteroid 2008 OS7, which is now heading towards Earth and will make its closest approach to our planet on Friday.
The moon is about 239,000 miles from Earth, or roughly 382,500 kilometers, so a giant asteroid the size of a football stadium will be 7.4 times farther than our natural satellite.
Experts call asteroids of this size a “city killer” because they are capable of destroying an entire city if they hit a populated part of the Earth. However, according to NASA, it is not in danger.
Those who want to watch its flight around the earth will need a telescope. “It will even be many times fainter than the faintest stars visible to the naked eye,” pointed out the astrophysicist and science director The Virtual Telescope Project Gianluca Masi.
Asteroid 2008 OS7 orbits the Sun every 962 days. After passing by Earth, it continues its oval path through the Solar System.
Scientists have identified more than 34,000 near-Earth objects. Last August, just over 2,300 were flagged as potentially dangerous, the website said Space.com.
Earth has been hit by strong radiation, and experts can’t believe where it came from in space. More in the report (11/2023):
TN.cz
2024-02-02 09:40:00
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