Here it comes.
An asteroid around the size of London’s Hyde Park is set to have a close shave with the Earth in two weeks time.
It’s classed a ‘potentially hazardous’ by Nasa and will fly past at a speed of around 67,000mph (107,826kmh).
For an idea on the exact size and how close it’s going to get, it’s believed to be around 0.7 miles (1.1km) wide and will pass by us on 4 February at a distance of around 2,615,128 miles (4,208,641km) away.
Obviously that feels pretty far given to the shop at the end of the street feels like a treck, but in space terms it’s pretty near. To get a bit of perspective, the moon is about a tenth of that distance away, or 238,855 miles (384,400 km).
As for it’s description as ‘hazardous’, Nasa says that about any object that comes within 4,600,000 miles (7,403,00km) of our planet.
It comes after last year when the first known interstellar swung by us. The cigar-shaped object, which was given the moniker 1I/2017 U1(‘Oumuamua), was the first space rock to be identified as forming around another star.
At the time of that asteroid passing, Dr Karen Meech, from the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii, said: “Oumuamua may well have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with the solar system.”
When you get past the fear that they could slam into us and bring all life to an end, asteroids are actually pretty cool, aren’t they?
