Several asteroids close to Earth are buzzing in our neighborhood the same week



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asteroid nasa

They are up there.

The NASA

There are thousands of asteroids flying around the inner solar system, and pretty much every two weeks, we can see one of them pass closer to our planet than the distance between us and the moon.

But last week, there seemed to be more space rock traffic than usual, with at least six asteroids lying at about a lunar distance and 12 passing at less than five lunar distances, according to NASA data. .

We have already reported the 2018 RC building size asteroid passing on Saturday, but the smaller 2018 RW was brought even closer a few hours after its discovery. There was also the 2018 RS, which was about the size of a pickup truck, and was spotted only a day after she was already at less than 0, 3 lunar distances (106,214 kilometers or 65,998 miles) of our planet.

The good news is that asteroids visible only in the rear view mirror of astronomers tend to be smaller.

Keep in mind that all these asteroids pose no threat to our planet. There are often confusion around tabloid headlines that talk about "potentially dangerous" asteroids because nearly 2,000 rocks in space are currently being tracked. But none of these will soon send us the way of the dinosaurs.

Any asteroid of a certain size and on an orbit that places it at a certain distance automatically gets this potentially dangerous label. In other words, this does not mean that a detailed analysis has been done to determine that the asteroid in question actually targets for us.

In June, a the asteroid just 6 feet (2 meters) wide was seen shortly before it reached our atmosphere. Small pieces were later found in Africa.

An asteroid that has a chance to hit us is named Bennu, and that's the destination of NASA's Osiris-Rex mission. But again, there is no reason to worry for the moment: it is estimated that there is only one chance out of 2,700 to hit the Earth and not before 2175 or 2196.

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