A small asteroid being tracked by astronomers is about to make a close approach to Earth, passing within 0.00012 Astronomical Units (AU) of Earth.
The asteroid is being tracked by NASA, and is small at around 2.2 to 4.9 meters (7.2 feet to 16 feet). According to an analysis by astronomers, the asteroid will be about 0.03 Lunar Distances at its closest approach, or just 3 percent of the distance from our planet to the Moon. Though this is a close approach, it sounds a little less worrying in kilometers, with the asteroid being around 12,298 kilometers (7,641 miles) from the Earth as it zooms by at 14.4 kilometers per second (8.9 miles per second).
The object, which will make its closest approach at 18:28:42 UTC, was discovered on April 9 this year; when objects are discovered (or sometimes rediscovered), they are named for the year.
“The provisional designation includes the year of its discovery followed by two letters that give the order of its discovery during that year,” the European Space Agency (ESA) explains. “Objects, discovered between 1 and 15 January, are designated in order of their discovery, AA, AB, AC, and so on. Those discovered between 16 and 31 January are given the letters BA, BB, BC, and so on.”
NASA and other observatories track the orbits of objects discovered in the Solar System, keeping a particular eye on “near Earth objects” 140 meters (460 feet) and larger in size that could cause devastation if they were to cross paths with Earth. So far, astronomers have been able to predict the orbits of known objects up to about 100 years in the future. The good news is that “no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years,” according to NASA.
Asteroid 2024 GJ2, despite being set for another close approach in 2048, is not on the list of objects of concern. It is simply too puny to worry about.
