Giant asteroid to fly by Earth today
The US space agency NASA has warned that a very large asteroid will pass very close to the Earth. According to the information shared by NASA’s Far Near Earth Studies Center, this asteroid named 7482 (1994 PC1) is moving towards Earth, and will pass very close to Earth today on January 18, 2022. The size of this asteroid is about 3,450 feet, which is more than any building on earth. For comparison, the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, is 2,722 feet in length. This asteroid, moving at a speed of about 45,000 miles per hour, will pass closest to the Earth at 2.45 am on January 19 Indian time. However, this asteroid will be 1.93 million km away from Earth, which is five times the distance between the Moon and Earth.
NASA has designed a system to track it, with the help of which it can be seen live. When an object coming from the east of the sky towards the earth is seen with the help of a telescope, then its speed seems to be very low. In such a situation, it becomes very difficult to identify which asteroid is coming towards the earth.
This is the reason that when in 2019, an asteroid passed near the Earth at a distance of 43 thousand miles, then its information was known only 24 hours ago. NASA has predicted at least five asteroids to pass by Earth this month. Although NASA has not termed any of these as a major threat to the Earth.
