NASA asteroid tracker: 1,500FT asteroid is headed for Earth approach TODAY at 60,000MPH
A MONSTROUS asteroid taller than the Empire State skyscraper will shoot past the Earth today at nearly 80-times the speed of sound, NASA's asteroid trackers have revealed.
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The imposing asteroid, dubbed by NASA Asteroid 1999 VF22, will shoot by today on a so-called “Earth Close Approach”. NASA’s asteroid trackers have narrowed the passage down to the afternoon hours of Wednesday, February 20. Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) expect Asteroid VF22 to approach the Earth around 3.57pm GMT (UTC). As this happens, the space rock will barrel through space at unimaginable speeds of around 59,234mph.
This is the equivalent of 26.48km per second or 78.2-times the speed of sound.
NASA’s JPL further estimates VF22 measures somewhere in the range of 656.2ft to 1,476.4ft (200m to 450m) in diameter.
An asteroid this big would tower over the Empire State Building in New York, the Eiffel Tower in France and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Scarily enough, asteroids this big strike the planet on average between every 1,000 years to every 500,000 years.
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According to the European Space Agency (ESA), such asteroids are some of the biggest threats lurking in the depths of space.
No known object merits any worry, but many remain undiscovered
The ESA said: “The main challenge stems from the population of middle-size objects, ranging from tens to hundreds of metres in diameter.
“There are a lot of these asteroids, and most have not been spotted yet. Any impact from one of these could really do damage to a city or a populated area.
“But if they are discovered early enough, their point of impact could be estimated with a good degree of accuracy, and measures could be taken to protect people.
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“Today, no known object merits any worry, but many remain undiscovered, so we need to keep searching.”
Thankfully, there is no indication Asteroid VF22 will swerve from its orbit tonight and strike the Earth with full force.
Even at its closest, the space rock will miss the Earth by more than 4.5 million miles (7.35 million km).
This will happen because VF22 is a so-called “Near-Earth Objects” (NEO) – an asteroid or comet, which cuts into the Earth’s orbit.
NEOs will often come close to our home planet, which might seem like a lifetime away, but on the cosmic scale of distances is a close brush.
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NASA explained: “Near-Earth objects are asteroids or comets of sizes ranging from metres to tens of kilometres that orbit the Sun and whose orbits come close to that of Earth’s.
“Of the more than 600,000 known asteroids in our Solar System, more than 16,000 are NEOs.
“An example of a NEO is 25143 Itokawa, an object about 300m in diameter that was visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005.”
Just before 4pm GMT today, Asteroid VF22 will approach our corner of space from a distance of approximately 0.04917 astronomical units (au).
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One astronomical unit measures around 93 million miles (149.6 million km), which is the garage distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Asteroid VF22 will cut this down during its flyby down to just 4.57 million miles (7.35 million miles).
After the space rock’s flyby, NASA’s JPL predicts VF22 will pass the Earth again on November 16, 2020.
The asteroid will also pass the planet Mercury on March 27 this year and swing by Venus on March 15, 2025.