A Giant Asteroid Will Fly Really Close To Our Earth, Travelling At 16,740 Kmph

On August 10, 2019, A giant asteroid is going to pass by our blue planet.

How giant, you ask? Not much, roughly 569 metres in diameter, (for reference, the Statue of Unity in Gujarat is 182 metres tall).

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What's scarier is the distance it'll be at, from the Earth. The asteroid (named 2006 QQ23) will fly within 0.049 astronomical units at around 16,740 kmph (7.4 million kilometres off earth). For reference, 1 AU = Distance between Earth and the Sun. Due to this, the asteroid is regarded as a NEO or Near-Earth Object.

With the object moving within 0.5 AU of Earth and being larger than 140 meters in diameter, it has been labelled as a potentially hazardous object.

If 2006 QQ23 were to actually hit Earth, it has the power to completely wipe-out an entire city. On the other hand, if it hit the seas or the oceans, it could cause cataclysmic destruction to the flora and fauna in the water bodies as well as the coastal areas nearby.

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Surprisingly, Lindley Johnson and Kelly Fast of NASA's Planetary Defence Coordination Office, (who's responsible for tracking near-Earth objects in our Solar System) doesn't find it to be very dangerous.

It is very common for asteroids and meteors to fly by Moon or Earth and aren't really threatening. However, they are surely monitored as sometimes a few fragments tend to enter Earth's atmosphere, but they explode upon entry and result in shiny meteor showers. Yet, they're always closely monitored to be wary of.

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According to NASA's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies, there are around 900 known near-Earth asteroids with an approximate diameter of more than 1km.

To safeguard Earth from harmful asteroids, NASA has been planning a project with the European Space Agency (ESA), called the Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART). Where a fast-moving projectile is launched at an incoming asteroid in order to safely direct it away from the planet.