New Delhi:
A massive asteroid, identified as 1998 FF14, is rapidly moving closer towards Earth. According to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the space rock is bigger than 460 feet and is moving toward the blue planet at the breakneck speeds of 22.26km per second or 49,794mph (80,136kph). But the good news, scientists tracking the asteroid claim that it is on an evasive path and is expected to zoom past the earth on the morning of September 24.
At its closest, the space rock will approach our planet from a distance of 0.02780 astronomical units (au). Importantly, a single astronomical unit equals the distance from Earth to the Sun i.e. about 93 million miles (149.6 million km).
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Well, the flyby of asteroid 1998 FF14 might seem like a lifetime away. But on the larger scale of the solar system, FF14’s approach is a near-miss. Importantly, NASA does not expect the asteroid to hit Earth on any of those occasions.
It is to be noted that asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the Sun. Although asteroids orbit the Sun like planets, they are much smaller than planets. The celestial bodies can bring tsunamis, shock waves and flattening winds that could be catastrophic.
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The space rocks approach towards the Earth due to the gravitational forces that affect them. It is said that one day, all life on Earth will extinct and an asteroid could be the possible reason. Shocked to hear that? However, a car-sized asteroid slams into the Earth's atmosphere about once in a year. On the other hand, an asteroid large enough to threaten the existence of life on Earth arrives once in every few million years.
