A massive “city killer” asteroid that is headed toward Earth has been observed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will also get as near to Earth as possible this afternoon, at a distance of roughly 1.77 million miles. This asteroid will be 7.4 times further from Earth than the Moon, which is roughly 239,000 miles away.
NASA estimates that the fast-moving space rock, which is approximately the size of a US football stadium and measures about 890 feet across, will be traveling at about 41,000 mph. Asteroids of this magnitude have been dubbed “city killers” by experts because they have the power to completely destroy a metropolis if they strike a populous area of the planet.
Even yet, without a telescope, this asteroid will be too small and too far away to view. Astrophysicist and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project Gianluca Masi emailed Business Insider that it will be roughly 10,000 times fainter than the faintest stars seen with the unaided eye.
However, you’re in luck if you’d like to see the asteroid as it passes by! Today at 1 PM ET, Masi and his colleagues will begin live taping of the event. The live stream is available for viewing in the video below or on YouTube.
The asteroid 2008 OS7 will be followed live as it passes Earth. It will be discernible to viewers as a tiny dot traveling past other stationary tiny dots—also known as stars—in the backdrop. According to Masi, the livestream will run for roughly 45 minutes.
It’s “something always very fascinating to see,” Masi told BI, citing prior flybys that VTP has captured.
About Asteroid 2008 OS7
Every 962 days, the asteroid 2008 OS7 round the Sun. It will proceed on its oval-shaped course through our Solar System after passing past Earth.
Because of its elliptical orbit, the asteroid’s distance from Earth varies greatly each time it gets closer to Earth.
For instance, according to the website Space Reference, it will be approximately 9.7 million miles from Earth in July 2037, when it makes its next close encounter.
Potentially hazardous asteroids
Because of its size and proximity to Earth, NASA classifies asteroid 2008 OS7 as “potentially hazardous”. If an asteroid has a diameter of at least 460 feet and circles the Earth at a distance of approximately 4.65 million miles, it is classified as potentially hazardous.
Over 34,000 near-Earth objects have been identified by scientists. A little over 2,300 have been classified as possibly dangerous. However, NASA believes there are likely a lot more out there that are yet undiscovered. We would need five or ten years’ notice to destroy or divert a massive asteroid if it were headed straight for Earth.
The Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is scheduled to launch in September 2027. To broaden NASA’s hunt for near-Earth objects that might pose a hazard to Earth, it would launch an infrared space telescope into orbit.
