The Asteroid 2020 QL2 is said to hurtle past both Earth and the Moon! NASA describes this as a very "near Earth" approach scheduled to happen on Monday, September 14. This particular asteroid is estimated to actually be as large as about 400ft or 120m, making this almost as big as the size of the really iconic London Eye.
The speed at which the asteroid travels could easily make a trip from the UK all the way to New York more than a total of eight times in a single hour! However, the asteroid is said to safely pass by our planet at about ten times the distance between the Moon and Earth or about 4,259,235 miles away.
NASA labels this an NEO
Despite what most people might call an enormous distance, NASA has still described this as a particular "near-Earth object" otherwise known as NEO. Even the US space agency notes that Near-Earth Objects otherwise known as NEOs, are both comets and asteroids that have actually been nudged by a certain gravitational attraction of the nearby planets into orbits that still allow them to enter Earth's very own neighborhood.
The Asteroid 2020 QL2 was initially first seen on August 14 of the current year, with the most recent sight being on September 3, according to the data presented by NASA. The space organization has categorically confirmed that thighs particular space rock will in fact not hit Earth.
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What if the asteroid did hit earth?
If the asteroid did hit Earth, the computation shows that the damage would be catastrophic. At a size of 120 meters long, this would be even more catastrophic than the previous Chelyabinsk event that happened back in 2013 when a particular 20 meter meteor exploded all the way in Chelyabinsk, Russia. This smashed multiple windows as well as injured about 1000 people altogether.
Although it is confirmed not to hit Earth, NASA still iterates that about a hundred tons of different "interplanetary material" are heading towards Earth's surface on a daily basis. These particles are only tiny dust particles that were slowly created when the comet's ice vaporises.
The chances of asteroids
Despite this, about every 10,000 years, it is said that rocky or iron asteroids sizing over 100 meters would actually be expected to penetrate Earth's surface resulting in local disasters or even the production of tidal ways that can easily inundate certain low lying coastal areas.
On an average of about a few hundred thousand years, the asteroids that are sized larger than a kilometer could indeed cause global disasters. NASA still says that there is currently nothing to fear as the given chance that a major asteroid might hit Earth is still very slim.
NASA also reminds people that should an asteroid collide on Earth, there is still a 70% chance that the asteroid should hit the water instead of the land. The given chances for asteroids that big to destroy a city is said to be just around 0.1% in any year.
This article is owned by TechTimes
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
