A huge asteroid will collide with Earth's orbit next week
NASA scientists are tracking a huge asteroid just days away from colliding with Earth's orbit. The asteroid, called 199145 (2005 YY128), has a diameter of about one kilometer, and is classified as a near-Earth object.
The asteroid is scheduled to hit the planet's orbit next week. According to reports, the width of the asteroid is estimated to be between 570m and 1300m. Which makes it wider than the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA.
asteroids asteroid 199145 (2005 yy128) close-approach 2023-feb-16 at 00:46 utc
The asteroid will approach Earth by about 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles) from Earth on February 16, with NASA not confident enough to comment on whether it will actually crash into Earth's orbit and cause any harm to the planet.
This comes just two weeks after another huge asteroid passed Earth in one of the closest encounters ever recorded, but failed to make an impact in any way.
monstrous asteroid (199145) 2005 yy128 | february asteroid 2023 | potentially hazardous asteroid
Asteroid 2023 BU was discovered only on January 21, and was only 2,200 miles from Earth's surface, as it flew over the southern tip of South America in the early morning hours of January 27.
This means that it has approached 10 times closer to the world's communications satellites, which lie within an arc 22,000 miles above us. It is a distance roughly equal to the distance from London to Cyprus.
And NASA states that asteroids less than 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter will likely burn when they enter the Earth's atmosphere, which leads to little or no harm on Earth, but this asteroid heading towards us is much, much larger than that.
Asteroid 2023 BU Moving Closer to Earth Form Space Captured by NASA
Although 199145 (2005 YY128) is much larger, and NASA is not sure whether or not the space rock will crash into Earth's orbit and whether it will be able to impact Earth, the US space agency says there is no need to panic.
Source : websites