According to NASA, an asteroid the size of a blue whale is going to fly past Earth on Friday.
The asteroid is about the size of an adult blue whale and will pass by the Earth at a speed of more than 30,000 km/h.
The asteroid is travelling at 27 times the speed of sound and will come within about 2.67 million miles of Earth. This is less than a tenth of a second.
Why are comets and asteroids so strange?
NASA flags any space object that comes within 120 million miles of Earth as a "near- Earth object" and any fast- moving object within 4.5 million miles of Earth as a "potentially hazardous" object. Astronomers watch for any deviation from their predicted trajectory, such as an unexpected bounce off another asteroid, that could put them on a collision course with Earth.
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) is an array of four telescopes capable of performing a complete scans of the entire night sky once every 24 hours. More than 700 near- Earth asteroids and 66 comets have been detected by ATLAS. There were two asteroids that hit Earth, the first exploding off the coast of Puerto Rico and the second landing near the border of Africa. The asteroids didn't cause any damage.
According to NASA, there is no known risk of an asteroid collision with Earth for at least the next 100 years.
Space watchers don't think they should stop looking. There are still plenty of asteroid impacts in recent history that justify the continued vigilance.
Live Science reported that a bowling ball-sized meteorite exploded over Vermont in March of 2021. The most recent meteorite event, which took place near the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk, has nothing on those fireworks. As the Chelyabinsk meteorite hit the atmosphere, it generated a blast equal to around 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, or 26 to 33 times the energy released by a bomb. Approximately 1,200 people were injured when fireballs rained down on the city and its surroundings.
Space agencies around the world are working on ways to stop an asteroid from hitting our planet. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was launched in November of 2021. There is an asteroid-redirect mission in the works. The country hopes to divert the space rock from a potential catastrophic impact with Earth by slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu.
It was originally published on Live Science
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