An asteroid approaching Earth would be "potentially dangerous"

This asteroid is larger than the tallest skyscraper. It is expected to cross Earth’s orbit this Saturday, February 15, but astronomers say it will not get close enough to threaten our planet.

About 65 million years ago, a asteroid the size of the Himalayas crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. For many scientists, the impact and its consequences would have led to the extinction of dinosaurs and countless marine species. Today, the United States Aerospace Agency (NASA) is scanning space to identify whether or not such a threat could re-emerge. Its center for the study of near-Earth objects (in the orbit around the Sun can form an intersection with that of the Earth), CNEOS, has identified a “Potentially dangerous object.”

Orbiting the sun, its trajectory will cross that of Earth this Saturday, February 15, around noon French time. He is currently traveling through space at a speed of 54,000 kilometers per hour. The technical name of this asteroid is 163373 (2002 PZ39). It would be taller than the tallest skyscraper ever built – the Burj Khalifa and its 828 meters high, in Dubai. Its diameter is indeed estimated at 990 meters. The possible fall of such an object on our planet could have disastrous consequences, in the impact zone and even beyond. In comparison, that at the origin of the Chicxulub crater and the end of the reign of the dinosaurs would have measured between 11 and 81 kilometers in diameter. However, according to CNEOS estimates, 163373 (2002 PZ39) should cross our planet at a distance of several million kilometers : 4.8 million kilometers, to be exact. Or, more than ten times more than the Earth-Moon distance. It therefore has no chance of getting close enough to Earth to penetrate the upper layers of its atmosphere and initiate a meteoric fall. According to astronomers, this approximation should, at most, only slightly deviate the path of this asteroid before it inevitably departs from our beautiful blue planet.

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