[ad_1]
Asteroids will pass in front of our home world every few hours on Saturday, November 10th.
NASA predicts that the first asteroid, dubbed Asteroid 2018 VS1, will overtake the Earth at 14:03 GT (UTC).
The passage of the asteroid will mark the first terrestrial flight of space rock in five years.
Astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California estimate that the asteroid VS1 is 13 to 28 meters tall.
At the upper end of the estimate, the imposing asteroid measures more than 2.5 times the length of a London double-decker bus.
An asteroid impact of this size could potentially hurt thousands of people.
NASA's trajectory estimates suggest that the asteroid will approach 0.00927 astronomical unit (AU) or 3.62 lunar distances (LD) from the Earth.
An astronomical unit is the equivalent of the position between the Earth and the Sun, which means that the asteroid VS1 will approach 1.38 million km (861,700 km) from the planet.
The distance is roughly equivalent to 3.62 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Shortly after, the asteroid 2018 VR1 will go much further.
The size and speed of the asteroid are comparable to those of the VS1 asteroid, but will only approach 3.12 million miles (5.03 million km).
NASA's JPL is waiting for the space rock to reach its closest point to Earth around 1419 GMT.
The asteroid measures between 14 and 30 m.
At 98.42 feet, the asteroid is about five times larger than an average giraffe and is twice as big as the Hollywood sign in California.
According to NASA calculations, this is the first and last time that the space rock will approach Earth closely.
Later in the afternoon, the third asteroid will spin beyond the planet.
The asteroid 2018 VX1 is the smallest of the three asteroids, but will also approach the planet – closer than the moon.
At around 18:21 GMT, the asteroid VX1 will reduce the distance to Earth to 0.99 LD or 0.00255.
This equates to only 237,037 km (381,474 km).
In astronomical terms, this is an extremely close approach that deserves the interest of NASA's asteroid trackers.
The space agency explained: "During their orbit around the Sun, objects close to the Earth can sometimes approach the Earth.
"Note that a" near "passage astronomically can be very distant in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometers."
Near-Earth objects (NEO) are asteroids and comets whose trajectory is between 194.47 and 120.8 million miles.
A large number of these fast objects are classified as potentially dangerous objects as they approach the Earth at less than 7.47 million km (0.05au).
The asteroid VX1 is estimated to be 24.9 to 17.7 m (24.9 ft) in diameter.
Source link
