The US space agency “NASA” stated that scientists are tracking a huge asteroid, just days after it collided with Earth’s orbit.
She added that the asteroid, named 199145 (2005 YY128), has a diameter of about one kilometer, and is classified as a near-Earth object, with an estimated width of between 570 and 1,300 m. Which makes it wider than the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA.
And she indicated that the asteroid is scheduled to collide with the planet’s orbit next week.
According to NASA, the asteroid will approach Earth by about 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles) from Earth on February 16, with NASA not being confident enough to comment on whether it will actually crash into Earth’s orbit and cause any damage to the planet.
This comes just two weeks after another massive asteroid passed Earth in one of the closest encounters ever recorded, but failed to make an impact in any way.
Asteroid 2023 BU was discovered only on January 21, and was only 2,200 miles from Earth’s surface, as it flew over the southern tip of South America in the early morning hours of January 27.
This means that it is 10 times closer than the world’s communications satellites, which lie within an arc of 22,000 miles above us. It is a distance roughly equal to the distance from London to Cyprus.
And NASA pointed out that asteroids less than 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter will likely burn when they enter the Earth’s atmosphere, causing little or no harm to Earth, but this asteroid heading towards us is much, much larger than that.
