Two asteroids pass near the earth – One of the size of the statue of liberty

Today, November 25 will be a busy day in the skies above our planet: not one, but two asteroids will pass close enough to the Earth to be considered a "near Earth object" (NEO) , according to NASA data.

One of the NEOs, called 2018 VT7, is a smaller object of about 20 to 60 feet in diameter, which is pretty typical for the type of objects that pass near our planet. But the other NEO, known as the 2009 WB105, is a monster measuring between 170 feet and 400 feet wide. For reference, at its calculated maximum size, the asteroid is longer than a football field and larger than the Statue of Liberty.

The large 2009 WB105 asteroid came closest to Earth at 12:14 GMT on Sunday, November 25th, or just after 7:00 am, in the east, while the smaller 2018 VT7 was the closest. is approached at 17:24 GMT today, or at noon. The smallest asteroid will be located less than 3 million kilometers from Earth, which is close enough in cosmological terms. Fortunately, the largest object will remain at least 3.5 million miles from the screen, so it poses no risk here on the planet. For reference, the near-Earth object definition is a space body that is on a trajectory orbiting the Sun within a radius of 120 million kilometers.

While the big asteroids make headlines and are good content for the screenplay, NASA is more interested in objects as objects of the early solar system. Because they move in space and remain relatively unchanged over long periods of time, asteroids can be studied to find clues about the formation of the solar system there are about 4.6 billion # 39; years. Asteroids are usually formed from debris of dramatic events such as the birth or death of stars and planets, and most of the asteroids in our solar system are remnants of the formation of the inner planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

Another potential use of near-Earth asteroids is to exploit them for resources because they can contain hard-to-find minerals on Earth. Although it is currently uneconomical to send teams or robots to asteroids to extract them, this could in the future be a means of acquiring materials to generate rocket fuel and to develop new spatial structures. .