Four large asteroids will make their closest approaches to Earth on Thursday, each passing by the planet within a 24-hour time frame.
That’s about the size of a building, and one of the asteroids passing Earth Thursday exceeds that size threshold.
The skyscraper-sized rock will travel by the planet from a point 2.8 million miles away, NASA said.
NASA tracks close approaches and calculates the odds of those space rocks — including asteroids, meteors and meteorites — impacting Earth.
A fifth asteroid will also move past Earth on Thursday, but it’s much smaller.
On Thursday, four massive asteroids will approach Earth the closest, each going by the planet in a 24-hour period.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that two had already zipped past early in the morning. However, later in the day, the remaining celestial objects that were scheduled to follow suit were scheduled to appear, albeit not literally, at least from the perspectives of ground-based skywatchers. Even though these asteroids’ routes on Thursday represent the closest known approaches to Earth to date, they are still very far away, making it impossible for a human to see one of them slicing across space above.
“When these objects are scheduled to reach points within 4point 6 million miles from the Earth’s surface, which is approximately 19point 5 times the distance between the moon and the planet, NASA scientists mark locations along their paths as close approaches,” the agency’s asteroid watch dashboard states. Although the precise distance varies at different points in the moon’s orbit, the average distance between the planet’s surface and its satellite is 239,000 miles.
Scientists label an asteroid as “potentially hazardous” when it passes Earth within this “close range” and is larger than 150 meters (490 feet) across. That’s roughly the size of a building, and one of the asteroids that will pass Earth on Thursday is larger than that. Named 2002 NV16 after the year of discovery, the asteroid is roughly 177 meters (580 feet) across, or about the height of a 50-story skyscraper.
According to NASA, the rock the size of a skyscraper will pass by the planet from a distance of 2 to 8 million miles. Its orbit around Earth, the sun, and a few other planets in the Solar System closer to the sun is depicted in a diagram.
NASA monitors near-misses and determines the likelihood that asteroids, meteors, and meteorites will strike Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees the NASA center for studying near-Earth objects, states on its website that “the majority of near-Earth objects have orbits that don’t 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.”.
Compared with 2002 NV16, all three of the other large asteroids that have passed Earth or will do so on Thursday are significantly smaller. According to NASA, they are roughly the size of an airplane, with sizes ranging from 23 to 52 meters (76 to 176 feet). At roughly 1 to 5 million miles from the surface, the smallest of them approaches Earth the closest.
Thursday will also see the passage of a fifth, much smaller asteroid past Earth. That one is roughly the size of an SUV, measuring only 16 feet across. At 184,000 miles from the planet, it will make its closest approach.
