Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
a asteroid giant is projected to approach Earth’s orbit this weekend. Here are the facts.
Bigger than the Eiffel tower
Experts say the asteroid has the shape of an egg and is larger than the Eiffel Tower with a length of 330 meters. This asteroid is predicted to shoot into Earth’s orbit at a speed of 23,700 kilometers per hour.
Experts name this space object as the asteroid Nereus, a name taken from Greek mythology referring to the name of the sea god, the son of Gaia who is the incarnation of Earth.
Nereus this week is expected to be at a distance of 3.86 million kilometers from Earth, or about 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. The distance seems far, but in cosmic glasses it is only a “stone’s throw”.
Potentially harmful to the Earth
Due to its relatively large distance and size, the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has classified this asteroid as a ‘Potential Hazardous Object’ (PHO).
NASA describes every space object that is within 193 million kilometers of Earth as a ‘near -Earth object’ and fast -moving object within a distance of 7.5 million kilometers as a ‘potentially dangerous’ asteroid.
Asteroid First Discovered in 1982
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