A trio of enormous asteroids, including two ‘potentially hazardous’ ones, will cross Earth’s orbit around the sun this week, according to NASA. Here’s what that means.
Our solar system is home to millions of renegade space rocks, and this week three particularly large ones will blaze past Earth. But don’t worry – the closest one will still miss our planet by a comfy 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers), or about 10 times the average distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA.
On Monday (Feb. 27), an asteroid named 2012 DK31 will sail past our planet at a distance of about 3 million miles (4.8 million km). The asteroid measures an estimated 450 feet (137 meters) across, or about as wide as a 40-story skyscraper is tall, and its orbit around the sun crosses Earth’s orbit every few years.
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Although the space rock poses no imminent threat to Earth, NASA classifies it as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) – meaning the rock is large enough and orbits close enough to Earth that it could cause serious damage if its trajectory changed and a collision occurred. Generally, any asteroid measuring greater than 450 feet wide and orbiting within 4.6 million miles (7.5 million km) of Earth is considered a PHA. (NASA has mapped this asteroid’s trajectory for the next 200 years, and no collisions are predicted to occur).
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