An asteroid the size of a sports stadium was approaching Earth this week and will be joined by four other near misses, with the largest expected to pass within 2 million miles of the Blue Planet on Friday.
Asteroid 2008 OS7 is about 890 feet in diameter, according to NASA, and will come closest to Earth on February 2, when the space rock, first discovered in 2008, is expected to reach us by 1.77 million miles.
Although there is no risk of impact, its distance still puts it close enough to land on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Asteroid Watch website, which tracks the next five asteroid approaches.
The near miss of OS7 in 2008 will cap a week in which a barrage of other asteroids will pass too close for comfort to the world as we know it.
On Sunday 2024, AU4, a “building-sized” asteroid about 260 feet in diameter, will miss Earth by about 3.92 million miles at its closest point.
Then on Tuesday 2007 EG will pass a little closer and the “airplane-sized” asteroid is expected to pass at a distance of about 6.8 million kilometers.
Five asteroids are expected to pass within 2 million miles of Earth on Friday. Getty Images/iStockphoto
The asteroid expected to be the closest this week will be on Thursday, when asteroid 2024 BY, which NASA describes as about the size of a house, will come within 1.57 million miles.
That same day, another airplane-sized asteroid, 2003 BM4, about 120 feet in diameter, will pass by at a distance of 2.06 million miles.
For comparison, the average distance between Earth and the Moon is about 239,000 miles, according to NASA. The Sun is approximately 93 million miles from Earth.
According to NASA, “most near-Earth objects have orbits that do not bring them very close to Earth and therefore pose no risk of impact, but a small fraction of them, called potentially hazardous asteroids, require more attention”.
![Diagram of the solar system showing 5 asteroids, the largest the size of a sports stadium, passing by Earth this week. [Filename: 5-asteroids-including-one-size-75619165]](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/5-asteroids-including-one-size-75619165.jpg?w=1024)
The largest of the five asteroids is about the size of a sports stadium. POT
NASA’s definition of “potentially hazardous objects” (PHO) includes asteroids and comets larger than 500 feet that are predicted to come within 4.7 million miles of Earth.
In December, NASA launched OSIRIS-APEX to study Apophis, the so-called “God of Chaos” asteroid, a huge rock measuring about 370 meters in diameter that is expected to pass close to the planet at an unthinkable distance of 20,000 miles in 2029. .
According to NASA, an asteroid coming this close to Earth “has not happened since the dawn of history.”
The Post contacted NASA for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn