AN ASTEROID the size of a jumbo jet will whip past Earth at top speed today – one of a dozen scheduled to fly past this week.
The potentially dangerous space rock 2022 DP3 will make its close approach at 4:34 p.m. UK time (12:34 EST), according to Nasa.
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It’s expected to pass within 700,000 miles of our planet – or roughly three times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
The object has been added to Nasa’s “Close Approaches” database – though it poses no danger to our planet.
Thousands of so-called near-Earth objects (NEOs) are tracked to provide an early warning if they shift onto a collision course with our planet.
Any space object that comes within 4.65 million miles of us is considered “potentially hazardous” by cautious space organisations.
According to Nasa’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, asteroid 2022 DP3 is travelling at up to ten kilometres (six miles) per second.
That’s about 36,000 kilometres per hour – or twice the speed of a bullet.
The space rock measures up to 69 metres across, making it about the size of a Boeing 747 jetliner.
It’s one of more than a dozen space objects expected to make what Nasa calls “close approaches” this week.
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Fortunately, none of the asteroids being tracked by the space agency are thought to pose any danger to us.
Astronomers are currently tracking 2,000 asteroids, comets and other objects that could one day threaten our pale blue dot, and new ones are discovered every day.
Earth hasn’t seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago.
However, smaller objects capable of flattening an entire city crash into Earth every so often.
One a few hundred metres across devastated 800 square miles of forest near Tunguska in Siberia on June 30, 1908.
Fortunately, Nasa doesn’t believe any of the NEOs it keeps an eye on are on a collision course with our planet.
That could change in the coming months or years, however, as the space agency frequently revises objects’ predicted trajectories.
“Nasa knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small,” Nasa says.
“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
Even if one were to hit our planet, the vast majority of asteroids would not wipe out life as we know it.
“Global catastrophes” are only triggered when objects larger than 900 metres across smash into Earth, according to Nasa.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
