A GIGANTIC asteroid is making its way towards Earth and Nasa has labelled it as “potentially hazardous”. The US space agency expects the large space rock to shoot past us at a “close” distance and you should be able to watch it live. Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) is said to be up to 4,265 feet […]
A GIGANTIC asteroid is making its way towards Earth and Nasa has labelled it as “potentially hazardous”.
The US space agency expects the large space rock to shoot past us at a “close” distance and you should be able to watch it live.
Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) is said to be up to 4,265 feet wide.
That makes it almost three times as big as the Empire State Building.
The Empire State Building stands at around 1,453 feet tall so would pale in comparison to Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21).
Nasa has put the asteroid on its ‘Earth Close Approaches’ list.
The good news is it’s not expected to hit Earth.
An asteroid of this size would do some serious damage.
It should shoot past us on March 4 from an estimated distance of 3million miles away.
In comparison, the Moon is only about 238,900 miles from us.
A few million miles may sound pretty far away but it’s actually quite close in terms of space.
Nasa considers anything passing near Earth’s orbit a Near-Earth Object (NEO).
Thousands of NEOs are tracked by scientists to monitor whether they’re on a collision course with our planet.
Any fast-moving space object that comes within 4.65 million miles is considered to be “potentially hazardous” by cautious space organizations.
One small change to their trajectories could spell disaster for Earth.
Nasa thinks Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) will speed past Earth at around 27,000 miles per hour in the early hours of March 4.
That means it will be travelling 18 times faster than a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter at full speed.
It also means the space agency has got just less than a month to prepare for the flypast.
Space fans should be able to watch the asteroid as it shoots past Earth thanks to the The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0.
The live feed will start at 10 pm ET on March 4 (3am GMT March 5).
You can also track Asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21) virtually at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Small-Body Database Lookup website.
The asteroid won’t come within around 3 million miles again until 2043.
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In other news, Nasa is keeping a close eye on a huge, “potentially hazardous” asteroid that’s on its way to Earth’s orbit.
Nasa has upgraded its asteroid hazard software with some key changes that should help it better detect potentially dangerous space rocks.
And, the US space agency is planning for a ‘golden asteroid’ probing mission to launch this summer.
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