Asteroid the size of a bus grazes past Earth

10 years ago | Posted in: science | 952 Views

An asteroid the size of a bus came to within 186,000 miles of Earth – a close shave in cosmic terms – on Saturday morning.

The recently-detected asteroid HL129 was closer to Earth than the Moon – which is on average 238,855 miles away from our planet – on its closest approach at 4.13am.

The asteroid is about 7.6 metres wide, according to NASA’s Asteroid Watch project based at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

An asteroid of that size would cause significant damage if it impacted a major city, potentially hitting with the impact of a nuclear bomb roughly half the size of the one that hit Hiroshima in 1945.

The asteroid was discovered on Wednesday, April 28, by astronomers with the Mount Lemmon Survey team, according to an alert by the Minor Planet Center, an arm of the International Astronomical Union that chronicles asteroid discoveries, reports Space.com.

NASA scientists and researchers around the world constantly monitor the sky for asteroids that could hit the surface of the planet.

Startling new research has revealed just how vulnerable our planet is to asteroid impacts.

A trio of former astronauts has announced we’re up to ten times more likely to be hit than previously thought – and warn the only way we’ve avoided disaster so far is through ‘blind luck’…. see more

source: dailymail UK

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