Scary 170-foot asteroid set to fly close to Earth; NASA has all the details
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Asteroids are known for the potential danger that they carry in case they collide with planets or moons. The bigger they are and the faster that they fly, the more dangerous they are. And now, US space agency NASA has detected an asteroid that is a scary 170-foot monster and it will be approaching Earth in a very close encounter. How close will this airplane-sized asteroid get? Read on.
NASA has dubbed this one as Asteroid 2024 FG and it will make its closest approach to ou planet on April 7, 2024. According to the data collected by NASA, the asteroid will get as close as 2,940,000 miles to Earth. How far that will be can be judged from the fact that the Moon is 239,000 miles from Earth.
The reason it is important to track asteroids is to know how close they will get to our planet as there is always a potential for danger there. In fact, there are many things affecting the flight path of asteroids. Notably, the one that struck Earth over 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs was likely pulled towards our planet by the gravity of Jupiter from the Oort cloud, according to one theory. How big was this asteroid? It is estimated that the diameter of this asteroid was anything between 10 km to 15 km.
Another reason why asteroids are studied is to glean as much information about their composition as possible as they are the remnants of material leftover when the solar system was coming into shape some 4.6 billion years ago. They provide the perfect glimpse into the past as they are still pristine and have not been affected by weathering or any other extraneous factor.
Therefore, there is a crucial need to track these asteroids and for that, NASA has a string of equipment deployed both on Earth and in space to keep proper tabs.
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