[ad_1]
The thug asteroid, nicknamed by the US space agency Asteroid 2018 VE4, will make its appearance closest to Earth around 1724 GMT (UTC). Today's afternoon flyby marks the asteroid's fifth visit to the space wedge after his first flight on September 18, 1947. NASA astronomers do not expect VE4 to propagates in our natal world, but its destructive potential is nevertheless impressive. Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) estimate that space rocks measure somewhere in the region from 23 to 50 m.
An asteroid measuring more than 150 meters long is longer than six London imperial buses lined up and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Space rock may not be a planet killer, but even the bottom end of NASA's estimate bodes of potential danger to densely populated areas.
In 2013, more than 1,000 people were injured when a 20-meter-wide meteor went through the atmosphere and exploded over the Chelyabinsk city in Russia.
The powerful explosion of the meteor broke the windows of the city, throwing shards of glass on the faces of the spectators.
READ MORE: Asteroid impact hazard NASA 2023: the asteroid twice as big as Big Ben could SMASH Earth
According to Dr Matija Cuk of Cornell University in New York, impacts with these smaller asteroids are rare and there are no known cases of death.
The space expert said: "As for the smaller meteorites that touch the ground, they represent a very low risk and no human being has ever been killed by a small meteorite.
"I heard that a dog had been killed by a meteorite that fell in 1911 in Nakhla, Egypt, and that there had been material damage.
"Nevertheless, traffic, pollution and even lightning are much more dangerous than small meteorites."
Fortunately, the risk of brutal collapse of the 2018 VE4 asteroid on Earth is absolutely minimal.
The VE4 asteroid is an object close to the Earth, which means that its orbital approach closest to the Sun is less than 194.4 million km.
NEOs often find themselves on trajectories that bring them closer to the Earth, known as near-Earth approaches, but are mostly safe for humans.
Today, the space rock will not approach less than 0.03841 astronomical unit (at) or 14.95 lunar distances (LD) from the Earth.
READ MORE: Landing Mars: Will NASA Find Water on Mars? Could there be life on Mars?
This equates to nearly 15 times the distance from Earth to the Moon or 3.5 million miles (5.74 million km).
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."
The asteroid now darkens in space at dizzying speeds above 10,759 km / h or 4.81 km per second.
