A huge asteroid with about 2 km in diameter, which is equivalent to four times the height of the Empire State Building, it will pass close to Earth this Friday (27).
Although it is treated as ‘potentially dangerous’, the rock will pass about 4 million kilometers from our planet, that is, almost 10 times the average distance from here to the Moon, according to the American portal Live Science.
7335 (1989 JA), as it was named, is the closest celestial body to the planet in at least two centuries, according to NASA.
This asteroid orbits the Sun once every 570 days and can come more or less close to Earth, which worries astronomers.
The next time the space rock will pass this close will be on June 23, 2055, when it will be at a distance equivalent to 70 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
7335 (1989 JA) will pass at 9:26 am Brasília time, but it will not be possible to observe the asteroid with the naked eye.
One possibility is to follow the live broadcast on the Virtual Telescope Project website this Thursday (26), starting at 8 pm.
Why is it “potentially dangerous”?
NASA classified the asteroid as “potentially dangerous” due to its gigantic size and relative proximity to Earth’s orbit. Furthermore, the space rock is estimated to be traveling at around 76,000 km/h, 20 times faster than a bullet fired from a rifle.
The rock is one of more than 29,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) that NASA tracks per year. Any astronomical object that passes within 48 million km of Earth’s orbit can be considered a NEO. The vast majority of them are extremely small.
* Intern at R7under the supervision of Pablo Marques
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