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.
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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.
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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.