NASA has warned of an asteroid “the size of the Pyramid of Giza”, which will approach the earth this Thursday, May 9 and will pass the planet at a speed of more than 900,000 kilometers per hour.
According to the space agency, the asteroid in question, scientifically named 2024 JZ, would measure 120 meters in diameter, practically the size of the pyramid of Giza which peaks at 139 meters high. However, NASA wants to reassure about its dangerousness, saying that it “will pass safely in front of Earth at a distance of 2.6 million miles (4.2 million km)”.
“Today’s crossing is not a concern at all, it’s not the sort of thing we should be worried about,” Dr Edward Bloomer, principal at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, told the Daily Mail.
According to NASA, near-Earth objects are comets and asteroids that have been pushed by the gravitational pull of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood.
“Composed primarily of water ice containing dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system, while most rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system, between orbits of Mars and Jupiter »adds the same Source.
A near-Earth object is defined as any object that is within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) of the sun and therefore within 0.3 AU of Earth’s orbit.
Asteroids are defined as “potentially hazardous” if they are within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth and measure more than 140 meters in diameter.
