Asteroid bigger than London eye to zoom past earth on July 24, warns NASA

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued a warning that a huge asteroid “Asteroid 2020 ND” asteroid is set to make a close approach to our planet next week.

The celestial rock is one and a half times larger than the London Eye and will come within just 0.034 astronomical units (AU) of our planet on July 24.

“Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs,” NASA said in a statement.

According to NASA, Asteroid 2020 ND is about 170 metre-long will be as close as 0.034 astronomical units (5,086,328 kilometres) to our planet. It is travelling at a great speed of 48,000 kilometres per hour. The distance from the earth is what categories it as “potentially dangerous”.

There is also information of two asteroids that are expected to move past our planet. The two asteroids named by NASA are 2016 DY30 and 2020 ME3.

NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has revealed that the 2016 DY30 will be as close as about 0.02306 astronomical units to Earth which translates to 3.4 million kilometres. It has been classified as an Apollo asteroid because it crosses Earth’s path while travelling around the sun.

The 2020 ME3 will be farther away from Earth when it reaches its closest distance to the planet on July 21.

The expected distance from Earth of the smaller asteroid is about 0.03791 astronomical units which translate to 5.6 million kilometres. It has been labelled as an Amor asteroid as it does not cross Earth’s path and only flies close to Earth on several occasions.

However, the two celestial rocks don’t pose a threat to our planet.

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