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School bus-sized asteroid to fly past Earth on September 24, but here`s the good news
World`s premier space agency NASA has said that an asteroid, roughly the size of a school bus, is set to zoom past Earth on Thursday (September 24) at a distance of about 22,000 kilometres above the surface of earth.
Highlights
- World's premier space agency NASA has said that an asteroid, roughly the size of a school bus, is set to zoom past Earth on Thursday (September 24).
- The asteroid will fly past at a distance of about 22,000 kilometres above the surface of earth.
- Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona in Tucson discovered this asteroid named 2020 SW on Friday (September 18).
World's premier space agency NASA has said that an asteroid, roughly the size of a school bus, is set to zoom past Earth on Thursday (September 24) at a distance of about 22,000 kilometres above the surface of earth.
Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona in Tucson discovered this asteroid named 2020 SW on Friday (September 18). According to NASA, the celestial body will make its close approach below the ring of geostationary satellites orbiting about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometres) away from Earth.
According to astronomers, asteroid 2020 SW is roughly 15 to 30 feet (5 to 10 meters) wide or about the size of a small school bus, but there is nothing to worry as the asteroid is not going to cause any harm to us.
NASA scientists said that the asteroid is not on an impact trajectory with Earth and if it were then it would almost certainly break up high in the atmosphere and will apear as a bright meteor.
“There are a large number of tiny asteroids like this one, and several of them approach our planet as close as this several times every year. In fact, asteroids of this size impact our atmosphere at an average rate of about once every year or two” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.