Space is full of beautiful and dangerous things, Whether it¡¯s comets that fly around the universe throwing a spectacular light show, or eclipses that often make our jaws drop, space surely has a lot of things in its store.?
And another thing that we keep hearing about are asteroids.
Every month we hear about at least one asteroid flying past our planet, in the fear that the planet could one day crash on Earth and destroy it. While NASA hasn¡¯t ruled out that possibility, all the asteroids that have flown past our blue planet have done so at a considerable distance. Now we have yet another asteroid passing by Earth, and this one¡¯s going to be huge.
The asteroid is named 465824 (2010 FR)? and it is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on September 6 at around 2:08 PM next week. The space rock is considerably large in size and is expected to range from 120 to 270 metres in diameter. Just to put things into perspective, Rome¡¯s Colosseum is around 118 meters in diameter.?
While the asteroid is surely colossal in size, the chances of it hitting Earth on its journey is minimum. According to scientists at CNEOS (Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies), at the closest point to Earth, the asteroid will be around 4.6 million miles away from our planet.?
As of now, it is approximately 1.3 AU (Astronomical Unit). To put things into perspective, 1AU is the distance between Earth and Sun.
Just last month we saw an asteroid the size of a family car zipped past Earth, with astronomers noticing moments after it flew past us -- which is the closest flyby on record.?
The flying object dubbed 2020QG was first detected by astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in California, around six hours after it flew over the Southern Indian Ocean on August 16, 2020. It was roughly two metres long and 5.5 metres wide.