Asteroid traveling at 22,000 kilometres per hour heading towards Earth, NASA warns
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) are busy developing a planetary defence weapon aimed at protecting the earth from rogue bodies like asteroids.
These space agencies are apparently planning to develop a gigantic spacecraft that can be used to hit at the approaching space bodies so that their possible collision trajectory can be changed. In the wake of these busy developments, an asteroid speeding at a speed of 22,000 kilometres per hour is expected to skim past earth on June 4.
NASA has named this space body ‘Asteroid 2019 KY’, and it will make a close approach at around 7.30 am EST. The space agency has classified this space body as a near-earth object (NEO). As per experts, any space body that has an orbital path around the sun of 1.0 astronomical unit. It should be noted that one AU is basically 92.95 miles and it is equal to the distance between the earth and the sun.
Even though Asteroid 2019 KY is a near-earth object (NEO), the chances of a collision with the earth are pretty low. Experts at NASA revealed that Asteroid 2019 KY will miss Earth by an approximate 0.01412 astronomical units. It means that the space body will come as close as 2.1 million kilometres from the earth, which is a very short distance in astronomical terms.
“As they orbit the Sun, NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth. Note that a “close” passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres,” NASA wrote in a website page detailing near-earth objects.
A few weeks back, Iain McDonald, a top expert at Cardiff University had revealed that earth will be hit by a gigantic space rock one day or the other. As per McDonald, dreaded asteroid hits that have caused doomsday scenarios have happened in the past, and such events will be repeated in the future too.