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An asteroid the size of a house has shaved close to Earth today (April 18), passing closer to our planet than any other rock in space for the rest of the world. year – that is, to our knowledge.
Named 2019 GC6, the asteroid was discovered by NASA's Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, last Tuesday (April 9th), nine days before flying to Earth. The giant rock approached this morning at 14:41 EDT (0641 GMT), when it flew over our factory at a safe distance of approximately 219,000 kilometers (136,000 miles), a little over half of the average distance between the earth and the moon.
At the time, the asteroid was traveling at a relative speed of about 20,600 km / h (12,600 mph), according to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA estimated that the diameter of the accelerated space rock was "within a factor of two" of 49 feet (15 meters), which means that it could reach up to 98 feet (30 meters) from large.
Related: See the dramatic increase in the number of asteroids close to Earth that NASA has discovered (video)
NASA has classified GC6 2019 as a "potentially dangerous" near-Earth object ("NEO"), but that does not mean that the Earth was in danger when it flew over. The agency uses this term to refer to near-Earth objects located within 8 million kilometers of Earth's orbit and powerful enough to "cause considerable damage to the Earth," according to NASA. Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
Yet the fact that many asteroids passing unnoticed until the last minute – or even after they have flown over the planet – makes NASA's rough definition of a potentially dangerous object difficult. The closest asteroid flyby so far this year was held one day before the astronomers first detected the asteroid, named 2019 FC1. When it passed March 28th, this space rock was less than half the Earth compared to the 2019 asteroid GC6, according to EarthSky.org.
To contribute to the safety of the Earth, NASA and other organizations around the world are constantly scanning the sky for new threats, listing all the space rocks near the Earth's orbit and studying new threats. ways to stop an asteroid related to the Earth before the disaster strikes.
Send an Email to Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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