A ‘potentially dangerous’ asteroid the size of a blue whale will cross Earth’s orbit

This Friday, a “potentially dangerous” asteroid according to NASA will cross Earth’s orbit. It is as big as a blue whale, but poses absolutely no danger to Earth.

A “potentially dangerous” asteroid is heading towards Earth and will pass into Earth’s orbit this Friday. However, there is nothing to worry regarding. This asteroid poses no danger to our planet. With an estimated diameter between 13 and 28 metersit is much smaller than the two skyscraper-sized asteroids that passed by Earth two weeks ago.

Asteroid Ida – Credits: NASA/JPL

To give you an order of magnitude, this asteroid dubbed 2015 FF is regarding the size of an adult blue whale. It will pass this Friday in Earth orbit at environ 33 012 km/h. This is roughly equivalent to 27 times the speed of sound. It will therefore not linger in orbit. But then, why call it “potentially dangerous”?

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The asteroid will pass 4.3 million km from Earth

In fact, NASA reports all space objects, whatever they are, that are within 193 million km of Earth. These space bodies are called near-Earth objects. When they approach within 7.5 million km of Earth, they are automatically classified as objects ” potentially dangerous “. This is the case of the asteroid 2015 FF which will be at 4.3 million km closest to Earth.

All space objects reported by NASA are watched very closely by astronomers. In particular, they check that the asteroid does not deviate from its planned trajectory. This might obviously pose a much greater danger to Earth. In total, NASA monitors the orbits of regarding 28,000 asteroids.

So that explains why asteroid 2015 FF poses no risk. Of course, an asteroid of this size with a direct trajectory on Earth would cause a catastrophic impact on the surface. Thanks to all its observations, NASA is able to ensure thatno apocalyptic collision with an asteroid will occur for the next 100 years. Besides, asteroid impacts can produce a rare type of diamond.

Source : BGR