In what is constantly happening, since we don’t have enough problems dealing with it on Earth, there seems to be another big thing in space right for us. CTV News notes that NASA reports that a “giant asteroid” of more than two football fields is likely to close into our space and pass over Earth tomorrow, Earth Day Christmas. Known as asteroid 501647 and also referred to as “2014 SD224,” the asteroid will be closest to Earth at around 3:20 PM ET. The good news is that the asteroid is not going to make contact with Earth and is closest to it within 1.8 million miles of the surface.
For those who watch at home, that means that the asteroid is a fraction of the size of one seen in popular disaster movies. Take for example Deep Impact, which is a comet seven miles wide. The typical asteroid is thought to be between 92 and 210 meters (300 to 689 feet), making it about 2% the size of that famous space object. The asteroid as seen in Armageddon was even larger, however, measuring 600 miles in length and requiring the knowledge of Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
It should be noted that asteroid 501647, first observed in August 2014, is considered NEO (Near Earth) and NASA has even classified it as “Near Earth Earth”. could be dangerous ”. NASA is likely to monitor its course throughout the day. For clarity, Near-Earth “potentially dangerous” Objects are not so named because of their proximity to their impact on our planet but because of their size. The site also reports that two other NEOs are ready to orbit Earth but are much smaller than asteroid 501647 and “do not pose a threat to Earth.”
News of this asteroid comes weeks after NASA revealed that an “object of unknown origin” would be orbiting the Earth in the early morning of December 1. Although it made headlines and spread across the internet because of the complexity of that phrase, the Center for Near- Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Devolution Laboratory had a theory about what the object was but it didn’t they can prove it until it has passed. After clearing the skies this NEO was proven to be a 1960-Era Centaur rocket booster. This marked the second time a rocket level from a previous launch was captured in Earth orbit because back in 2002 part of the Saturn V rocket from Apollo 12 passed our planet as well.
(Cover image by CHRISTOPH BURGSTEDT / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)