NASA warns as huge asteroid to move past Earth today

New Delhi, July 24: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has issued a warning that a "potentially dangerous" Asteroid, which is named as "Asteroid 2020 ND", will move past Earth on July 24.

Its distance from Earth has placed it in the "potentially dangerous" category.

NASA said that Asteroid 2020 ND is about 170 metre-long and is travelling at a massive speed of 48,000 kmph.

In its warning, the NASA has said that the huge Asteroid 2020 ND is approximately 170 metres long, and will be as close as 0.034 astronomical units (5,086,328 kilometres) to the Earth.

However, the asteroid is in all likelihood to be safely away from Earth, the NASA stated.
According to NASA, the biggest asteroid expected to approach Earth in the next six months, which is having a diameter of 820 metres.

This mammoth space rock will approach Earth at a distance of 4.3 million kilometres on November 29, and has designated H value of 19.3, which cuts it out from NASA-CNEOS' PHA classification list.

The Planetary Society says, it is estimated that there are to be around 1 billion asteroids having a diameter greater than 1 metre. The objects that can cause significant damage are larger than 30 metres. About 30 small asteroids hit the Earth every year, but do not cause any major damage on the ground.

NASA announced in 2018, that it had started the construction of DART, which is scheduled to launch in 2021 with an aim to slam into the smaller asteroid of the Didymos system at around 6 km per second in 2022.