Warning about NASA asteroids: two giant asteroids on Earth at the near approach of tomorrow | Science | New

Asteroids should fly over our original planet less than twenty minutes apart, early Tuesday morning (20 November). The first of the space rocks, christened by NASA Asteroid 2018 VQ6, will reach its nearest distance from Earth at 7:29 GMT (UTC). NASA thinks the second space rock, Asteroid 2018 VP7, will be released soon after 7:59 GMT.

None of the asteroids will cut the Earth tomorrow, but both are big enough for NASA to monitor closely.

The asteroid experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California estimate that the two asteroids could be between 12 and 35 m (39.37 ft).

The VQ6 asteroid is the larger of the two, measuring an estimated diameter of 52.49 to 114.ft (16 to 35 m).

The space rock is an Apollo-type asteroid with perihelion, or the closest orbital point of the Sun, similar to the 1862 Apollo asteroid.

The VQ6 will reach as close as possible to Earth tomorrow, around 0.02931 astronomical unit (au) or 11.40 lunar distances (LD).

An astronomical unit equals about 149.59 million km (92.95 million miles), the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Tomorrow, the asteroid will reduce the distance to 4.28 million miles (2.72 million miles) – an incredibly close encounter at the astronomical scale of distances.

The near-Earth passage has earned the asteroid the title Near Earth Object (NEO).

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The US Space Agency 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."

NASA defines NEOs as any asteroid or comet lying on an orbital path around the Sun of about 194.47 million km (120au).

If a NEO is big enough to cause considerable damage at impact and approaches too close to the Earth to provide optimal comfort, NASA designates it as a potentially dangerous asteroid.

It is estimated that the second of two space rocks, the asteroid VP7, measures somewhere between 39.37 and 12.8 cm (39.37 ft).

The asteroid will reach a nominal distance up to the Earth of about 0.01 961 ua, which corresponds to 7.63 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

This means that the asteroid will fly tomorrow from a distance of more than 2.83 million kilometers.

NASA's JPL then expects the Asteroid VP7 to complete another 16 Earth Close approaches between May 3, 2019 and June 28, 2095.

The asteroid flies in space at a vertiginous speed of about 2,236.9 mph, or 5.67 kilometers per second.

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