The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced that two asteroids, each comparable in size to an aircraft, are set to swoosh past our planet.
NASA’s website recently revealed that a duo of airplane-sized asteroids will perform a close flyby of Earth today. Intriguingly, a building-sized asteroid is also expected to approach our planet on the same day. Following this, two more asteroids will draw near to Earth on Monday.
The three asteroids set to come close to Earth have an average size of around 73 meters. Any celestial object larger than approximately 150 meters and capable of approaching Earth within a certain distance is termed a potentially hazardous object by NASA.
According to NASA’s data, the asteroid 2024 FG will approach Earth up to a distance of 47.30 lakh kilometers.
The second airplane-sized asteroid, dubbed 2024 GB, will be situated at a distance of 52.60 lakh kilometers from our planet.
The third asteroid, 2024 FH2, is of a larger size – around 113 meters. It will be located at a distance of 61.40 lakh kilometers from Earth.
It’s worth noting that the average distance between Earth and the moon is approximately 385,000 kilometers.
Scientists continuously monitor Earth-crossing asteroids, whose paths intersect Earth’s orbit, and near-Earth asteroids that approach Earth’s orbital distance to within about 4.5 crore kilometers. Such asteroids may pose an impact danger.
Asteroids are remnants of rocky material left over from the early formation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. Most asteroids orbit the Sun in the space between Mars and Jupiter.
The size of asteroids can vary, with the largest known asteroid, Vesta, having a diameter of 530 km. According to NASA, the total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than that of Earth’s Moon. Moreover, over 150 asteroids are known to have a small companion moon, with some even having two moons.
