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Wednesday (September 22), fall equinox will bring the Earth about 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of night, and a renegade space rock measuring roughly three times the size of the Statue of Liberty.
This asteroid, named 2021 NY1, will pass without danger in front of our planet, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but is still considered a near-Earth object (NEO) because it will pass approximately 120 million miles (193 million kilometers) from the sun.
By this standard, asteroid 2021 NY1 will approach relatively close to about 970,000 miles (1,560,000 km) from Earth – just under four times the distance between Earth and the Earth. moon.
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While asteroids like this pose no threat to life on Earth, NASA is monitoring all NEOs in case their orbits might change in the future, bringing them closer to a collision with our planet. Studying the characteristics of NEOs may also reveal new information about the early days of the Earth. solar system, because most asteroids are rock fragments originating from this time.
Asteroid 2021 NY1 is a decent-sized boulder, measuring between 425 and 985 feet in diameter (130 to 300 meters), or somewhere between three and six Statues of Liberty tall, according to NASA NEO Database. Freewheeling rock traverses space at around 21,000 mph (33,800 km / h) – roughly 27 times the speed speed of sound.
For what it’s worth, this fall asteroid is far from the closest to ever pass through our neighborhood. That honor goes to asteroid 2020 HQ, which traveled just 1,830 miles (2,950 km) over the Indian Ocean on August 16, 2020, the sister site of Live Science Space.com reported. No known asteroid has approached – without burning in the atmosphere or hitting the surface of our planet.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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