Massive airplane-sized asteroid is coming towards the Earth today, NASA warns

A massive aero-plane-sized asteroid is coming towards the Earth. Nasa has warned that it may reach the closest approach to Earth today, August 28.

A massive aero-plane-sized asteroid is coming towards the Earth. Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has warned that it may reach the closest approach to Earth today, August 28.

According to NASA, the asteroid named NEO 2022 QP3 will pass by the planet today around 9:55 pm UTC, or 3:25 am IST. This one is a 100-foot wide asteroid which is expected to come as close as 5.51 million kilometres to the Earth.

According to the US space agency’s Planetary Defence Coordination Office has red-flagged the asteroid due to its close proximity and designated it as a “potentially hazardous object”. It is 19.5 times the distance to the Moon. CNEOS confirmed that the asteroid has a velocity of 7.93km per second. 

This comes after a 100-foot-diameter asteroid NEO 2022 QQ4 whizzed past Earth on Saturday. It was 5.93 million kilometres from our planet when it made its closest approach. As per CNEOS, the giant asteroid moved at a speed of 7.23 km per second.

Asteroids are enormous space rocks that orbit the Sun. However, because of the gravitational pull of the planets, they are sometimes able to alter their course and even collide with them.

In order to defend Earth from this giant asteroid, the US space agency would be launching a spacecraft right into an asteroid’s core to deflect it from its original path.

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