A “potentially dangerous” asteroid will pass Earth tomorrow

huge asteroid With a diameter of about 2 km, which is four times the height of the Empire State Building, it will pass close to Earth on Friday (27).

Although treated as a “potentially dangerous,” the rock would travel about 4 million kilometers from our planet, nearly 10 times the average distance from here to the moon, according to the US Live Science portal.

7335 (1989 JA), as it was named, has been the closest celestial body to the planet for at least two centuries, according to NASA.

This asteroid orbits the sun once every 570 days and can come closer or closer to Earth, which worries astronomers.

The next time the space rock will pass this close will be on June 23, 2055, when it will be at a distance of 70 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

7335 (1989 JA) will pass at 9:26 a.m. Brasilia time, but it will not be possible to observe the asteroid with the naked eye.

One possibility is to catch up on the live broadcast on the Virtual Telescope Project website on Thursday (26th), starting at 8pm.

Why is it “potentially dangerous”?

NASA has classified the asteroid as “potentially dangerous” due to its massive size and relative proximity to Earth’s orbit. Moreover, it is estimated that the space rock moves at a speed of about 76,000 km / h, which is 20 times faster than a bullet fired from a rifle.

The rock is one of more than 29,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) that NASA tracks annually. Any astronomical object passing within 48 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit can be considered as an astronomical object. The vast majority of them are very small.

* Trainee in R7Under the supervision of Pablo Marquez