A giant asteroid, bigger than the Eiffel Tower, will break into Earth’s orbit in just a week, NASA has warned.
NASA has warned that a mighty space rock of 1,082 feet is heading our way and should skim past us on December 11.
NASA closely watches Asteroid 4660 Nereus because its size. Asteroid 4660 Nereus is well over 492 feet long and will come within 4.6 million miles of Earth. That categorizes it as “potentially hazardous,” according to cautious space organizations (CCOs).
CCOs consider any fast-moving space object that comes within 4.65 million miles to be “potentially hazardous.”
However, you don’t need to panic because Asteroid Nereus isn’t expected to impact planet Earth. If everything goes smoothly, the colossal space rock should shoot past our planet at 14,700 miles per hour, according to NASA.
In addition, NASA expects the giant space rock to stay as far as 2.4 million miles away from Earth. That’s approximately ten times the distance between Earth and the Moon, which may seem pretty far away, but it’s actually close as near-Earth asteroids go. The average distance between Earth and the moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).
Anything passing within 120 million miles of planet Earth is considered a Near-Earth Object (NEO) by NASA. Scientists track asteroids and comets that will make relatively close approaches to Earth. NASA has a whole table full of these NEOs that are constantly updated.
One tiny change to their trajectories could wreak havoc on our planet. Astronomer Eleanor Helin first spotted Asteroid Nereus in 1982.
It relatively passes by Earth frequently, so NASA and the Japanese space agency (JAXA) once considered ‘punching’ it, of course, with the Hayabusa spacecraft.
Instead, the two space agencies, as part of their Double Asteroid Redirection Test, have agreed to target Asteroid 25143 Itokawa.
Here are the Next Five Asteroid Approaches.
