Asteroid three times bigger than Big Ben to zoom past Earth
New Delhi : An asteroid believed to be three times the size of the Big Ben is likely to zoom past Earth on Sunday, reported NASA.
The asteroid is travelling at a speed of 18,000 miles per hour, the Apollo-class asteroid called 3361 Orpheus is 984 feet wide and is currently on the US space agency’s “Close Approach” list.
This is because NASA class “Near-Earth Object” (NEO) as anything within 120 million miles of our planet such as asteroids and comets which have been “nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.”
Meanwhile, the US space agency has said that there is nothing to worry as there are very minute chances of it touching the earth. The space rock is expected to zoom past Earth at a distance of 3.5 million miles away from us.
If it was a bit closer to home — 4.65 million miles to be exact — then this could be classed as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA).
The asteroid itself was first discovered 39 years ago on 24 April 1982 at the National Astronomical Observatory in Chile.
Talking about the time, it is likely to cross our planet at around 7 pm.
Last Month, NASA had said that an asteroid of Eiffel tower size will fly past Earth on December 11, 2021. It’s classed as a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” (PHA) and being 1,080 feet-long, the space rock is three times the size of a football pitch and larger than 90 per cent of asteroids.
