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According to NASA’s website, two airplane-sized asteroids will fly by Earth today on Sunday. Apart from this, a building-sized asteroid will also come close to the Earth on April 7. Two more asteroids will come close to Earth on Monday.
The average size of the three asteroids that will come close to Earth is 73 meters.
An object larger than about 150 meters that can come within this distance to Earth is called a potentially hazardous object according to NASA.
An asteroid is named after Indian professor Jayant Murthy. Who is he?
According to data collected by NASA, the 2024 FG asteroid will come as close as 47.30 lakh kilometers to Earth. Asteroid 2024 GB, another plane-shaped asteroid, will be 52.60 lakh kilometers away from Earth. Asteroid 2024 FH2, which is 113 meters in size, will be 61.40 lakh kilometers away from Earth.
It is noteworthy that the average distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers.
NASA spacecraft captures 4.5 billion-year-old rocks from asteroid; Details here
Scientists constantly monitor Earth-crossing asteroids, whose paths intersect Earth’s orbit, and near-Earth asteroids that approach within Earth’s orbital distance (45 million kilometers) and may pose a threat of impact.
Fragments of asteroid 2024 BX1 confirmed to be ‘as old as the Solar System’
What are asteroids?
Asteroids are rocky remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Most of them can be found orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids range in size from Vesta, the largest of which is 530 km in diameter. According to the US space agency, the total mass of all asteroids is less than that of Earth’s Moon. “More than 150 asteroids are known to have a small companion moon (some have two moons). NASA says the total mass of all asteroids is less than Earth’s Moon.
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Published: 07 April 2024, 10:05 am IST
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