Sunday, June 30th, is Asteroid Day! And it turns out that two asteroids are passing close to Earth this weekend. Maybe you already saw one in the sky Thursday night. Because one of these two rocks has a monster diameter of 2,310 meters, or about the same as that of Mount Everest, according to Space Reference. The second, less imposing, will still pass very close to Earth, without posing any danger.
The first is an asteroid called 2011 UL21. It passed close to Earth around 10 p.m. on Thursday, June 27, at a speed of 26 kilometers per second, which may explain why some saw an unusual bright spot in the sky. We could then see it with the naked eye. For the moment, this celestial rock is not considered dangerous by NASA, but “potentially dangerous”, because it could come a little too close to us in a thousand years. And its immense size, as high as some mythical passes in the Alps, and which makes the object larger than 99% of the asteroids that have already approached Earth, could do absolutely catastrophic damage in the event of an impact. Fortunately, this year, 2011 UL21 “only” passes 6,634,850 km closest to Earth. This is 17 times farther than the Moon, but still much closer than the nearest planet, Venus, which is 42 million km away. It is expected to come even closer in 2089, and astronomers will be watching it closely.
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