[ad_1]
The monstrous asteroid dubbed NASA's 2009 Asteroid WB105 will make an appearance near Earth around 12:14 GMT (UTC) on Sunday, November 25th. Tomorrow's flyby marks the first time in three years that the asteroid is traveling around the corner of the Earth and scientists are paying attention. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory based in California, the space rock is between about 173 and 303 feet (53.8 to 120 m) in diameter.
At 40 meters, the asteroid WB105 will dominate the clock tower of Big Ben (96 meters) and the Statue of Liberty in the United States.
In other words, it's about the equivalent of 13 London Routemaster buses lined up.
Even at the bottom of the NASA estimate, the asteroid is larger than Nelson's column at Trafalgar Square and is nearly six times longer than a two-level bus.
The past impacts of asteroids over the last 200 years show that the space rocks included in this estimate can be incredibly catastrophic.
The 1908 event in Tunguska, which erased 2,000 km 2 (772 square miles) of a Siberian forest, would have been caused by a meteor of a width between 164 and 328 feet (50 and 100 m).
And in 2013, more than 1,000 people in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk were injured by windows shattered by the shards of a 20-meter-wide meteor.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), space rocks in the order of "a few tens to several hundred meters" are among the most dangerous that scientists know.
ESA explained: "Any impact of any of these could actually damage a city or populated area.
"But if they are discovered early enough, their point of impact could be estimated with a good degree of accuracy and steps could be taken to protect people.
"Today, no known object deserves to be worried, but many have not been discovered. We must therefore continue to search. "
Fortunately, the asteroid WB105 runs no risk on our planet from the short term or in the near future.
Tomorrow afternoon, the asteroid will perform a so-called approach closer to Earth, which means that it will approach the Earth within 50 million kilometers of its orbit.
NASA estimates that the WB105 will approach 0.03893 astronomical unit (AU) or 15.15 lunar distances (LD) from the Earth just after noon.
An astronomical unit is about 149.5 million km – the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
The asteroid WB105 will reduce this distance tomorrow to only 5.8 million km.
On an astronomical scale of distances, it is a very close pinch with the asteroid and means that WB105 is classified as a Near Earth object (NEO).
NASA explained: "When they gravitate 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."
According to NASA calculations, space rock accelerates at a speed of about 42 233 mph (18.88 km / h).
The asteroid WB105 will again pass over the planet on the same date, November 25, 2021.
Source link
