A “potentially hazardous” asteroid, almost the size of the world’s tallest skyscraper, will pass Earth next week.
Live Science reports that the asteroid, called 2022 RM4, has an estimated diameter of 1,083-2,428 feet or 330-740 meters, just under Dubai’s 2,716-foot-tall Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. The asteroid will barely pass our planet at around 52,500 mph, roughly 68 times the speed of sound.
The actual distance between Earth and the asteroid is six times the Earth’s distance from the moon, Forbes reports, which is very close by cosmic standards. The asteroid will approximately come within 1.43 million miles of Earth when it reaches its closest approach on Nov. 1.
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Astronomers at the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System in Haleakala, Hawaii, discovered the 2022 RM4 on Sept. 12, according to Forbes. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory classes it as a near-Earth object, an Apollo-type object and a potentially hazardous asteroid.
Asteroids within this classification have orbits larger than Earth’s around the sun, and their paths cross Earth’s path. 2022 RM4 orbits the sun every 1,397 days, and its path occasionally crosses Earth’s orbital path around the sun.
The asteroid will get close enough and be large enough for astronomers to photograph it using telescopes.
Is an asteroid going to hit earth?
No. NASA has estimated the trajectories of all the near-Earth objects for the next 100 years and has determined that the planet faces no known danger from an apocalyptic asteroid collision.
What is considered a near-Earth object?
Near-Earth objects are comets and asteroids that are within 1.3 AU (120.9 million miles) of Earth, according to NASA. An asteroid is considered potentially hazardous if it comes within 4.65 million miles of Earth and is larger than 500 feet in diameter, NASA says.
Contributing: Cincinatti Enquirer
USA TODAY
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