Potentially hazardous’ asteroid as tall as the Eiffel Tower will zoom by Earth today

An asteroid flying past earth — An artist’s interpretation of an asteroid flying previous Earth. (Picture credit score: Shutterstock)

A “doubtlessly hazardous” asteroid that spans the size of the Eiffel Tower will shoot previous Earth at present (April 26). However concern not, the large house rock will sail safely previous our planet, in line with NASA.

The asteroid, often called 2006 HV5 (opens in new tab), reached its closest level to Earth at round 12:00 a.m. EDT at a distance of round 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometers), in line with the Heart for Close to Earth Object Research (CNEOS) (opens in new tab) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. That’s greater than six occasions additional away from our planet than the moon.

2006 HV5 is estimated to be round 1,007 ft (307 meters) vast, plus or minus 249 ft (76 m), in line with CNEOS. The Eiffel Tower stands at 1,082 ft (330 m).

The hefty house rock is touring at round 38,900 mph (62,600 km/h) relative to Earth and takes round 282 days to orbit the solar, in line with CNEOS.

Associated: ‘Doubtlessly hazardous’ asteroid that just lately zipped previous Earth is an elongated weirdo with an odd rotation

The asteroid's orbit trajectory

The orbital path of 2006 HV5 (crimson) displaying the place the asteroid will probably be on April 26. (Picture credit score: NASA/CNEOS/JPL-Caltech)

A doubtlessly hazardous asteroid (PHA) is any asteroid measuring greater than 460 ft (140 m) in diameter and comes inside 4.65 million miles (7.48 million km) of Earth, or roughly 20 occasions the typical distance between Earth and the moon. There are round 2,300 recognized PHAs, and though most of them won’t ever come near touching Earth, they’re massive sufficient to trigger catastrophic harm have been they to strike our planet.

However even when certainly one of these goliaths was headed straight for Earth, NASA is now pretty assured it may push the errant house rock astray because of the Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART) mission, which efficiently redirected an asteroid by smashing a spacecraft into it in September 2022.

2006 HV5 shouldn’t be the one PHA that has intently zipped previous Earth just lately.

On April 6, a PHA measuring between 393 and 853 ft (120 to 260 m) throughout handed inside 1.8 million miles (2.9 million km) of Earth. And a humongous PHA, which measured someplace between 1,900 and 4,265 ft (580 to 1,300 m), handed by Earth on Feb. 15 at a distance of about 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km) from our planet.

Between Feb. 27 and Feb. 28, two extra PHAs — 2006 BE55 and 2012 DK31, which each measured round 450 ft (137 m) throughout — safely sailed previous Earth, together with a 3rd, smaller asteroid.

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