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The fast asteroid, christened by the NASA Asteroid Chief Judge 2019, is moving towards an approach called "Earth Close Approach". The news comes exactly one month after NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) discovered Space Rock for the first time. NASA's JPL now expects Asteroid CJ to move near the Earth this afternoon, Monday, February 25. NASA's asteroid trackers reduced the flyover of the asteroid at around 15:13 GMT (UTC).
When the asteroid nearly misses Earth, the rock will fly at a vertiginous speed of about 10 760 mph, or 4.81 km per second.
This means that the asteroid CJ will fly 14.02 times faster than the speed of sound.
And if that was not terrifying enough, NASA's JPL estimates that CJ's measurements are between 20 and 45 m (65.6 to 147.6 ft).
Down from this estimate, the asteroid looks like the devastating meteorite of Chelyabinsk, which struck Russia six years ago.
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In 2013, a small spatial rock measuring only 20 meters in diameter entered the atmosphere undetected and from the sun.
The asteroid has exploded over the Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, with 30 times the force of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, damaging more than 7,000 buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people with shards of glass.
Unfortunately, asteroids of this size are among the most frequently encountered space rocks in the solar system.
NASA explained, "Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky remains left by the initial formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
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"Most of these ancient space debris revolve around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt.
"Asteroids range in size from Vesta – the largest to about 530 km (329 miles) in diameter – to bodies less than 10 meters in diameter.
"The total mass of all the combined asteroids is less than that of the Earth's moon."
Fortunately, the risk that the asteroid CJ sidelines enough from its trajectory to sneak on Earth is rather minimal.
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Even at its closest point, the asteroid will miss seven times more of our planet from Earth's origin to the moon.
The NASA JPL estimates that the asteroid-shaped police head will approach the Earth at a distance of 0.01900 astronomical units (at).
An astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun and is approximately 150 million miles (150.6 million km).
Today, the asteroid followed by NASA will significantly reduce this distance to only 2.84 million kilometers.
After the close flyby, the NASA JPL calculates that the Asteroid CJ will approach Earth 20 times between today and February 2133.
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