A ‘potentially dangerous’ asteroid the size of a football stadium will pass by Earth later today.
The asteroid, named 2008 OS7, is expected to pass as close as 2.7 million miles to our planet at 14:41 GMT – about seven times further away than the moon.
The diameter is estimated at 480 meters, which is longer then the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (820 feet or 250 meters).
As OS7 flies past Earth in 2008, it will fly at a speed of 18.1 km per second or just over 40,000 miles per hour – about 50 times the speed of sound.
The asteroid is ‘potentially dangerous’, although fortunately no danger to our planet is expected.
As 2008 OS7 flies past Earth, it will fly at a speed of 18.1 km per second or just over 40,000 miles per hour – about 50 times the speed of sound (artist’s impression)
This 180-second exposure shot by the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy shows asteroid 2008 OS7 during its approach to Earth on January 31, 2024. Astronomers say an asteroid the size of a skyscraper came within 1.7 million miles (2.7 million kilometers) on Friday of the earth will pass. There is no chance of it hitting us as it will travel seven times the distance from the Earth to the moon
Asteroid 2008 OS7 – discovered in 2008 by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona – completes an orbit around the sun every 962 days (2.63 years).
But as it does so, it crosses Earth’s orbit, according to Dr. Minjae Kim, a space expert at the University of Warwick’s astronomy department.
He describes it as “very small,” relatively speaking, because the largest known asteroid in the solar system, Ceres, has a diameter of 900 kilometers (more than 3 million feet) – big enough for humans to live on.
“2008 OS7 – a very small asteroid whose orbit crosses Earth – has been classified as a ‘potentially hazardous asteroid’,” Dr Kim said.
‘Although this will still approach close to Earth, we don’t have to worry too much about it as this asteroid will not enter Earth’s atmosphere.
‘One of the most intriguing aspects of the 2008 OS7 is its estimated diameter based on its brightness and reflective properties.
“This puts it in the category of a small to medium-sized asteroid, about the size of a football field.”
According to NASA, the asteroid has a diameter of 210 to 480 meters (688 to 1,574 feet).
Depicted is the asteroid’s orbital path in white, as well as the orbits of Earth (blue), Mars (red), Venus (purple), and Mercury (pink)
It is estimated to have a diameter of up to 480 meters, which is longer than the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (820 feet or 250 meters, pictured)
Unfortunately, this asteroid will be too small to see with the naked eye or even with an average telescope.
NASA lists 2008 OS7 as one of the upcoming close approaches on its online tracker, which collects incoming objects that come closer and closer to Earth.
An asteroid is defined as “potentially hazardous” if it is within 0.05 astronomical units (4.65 million miles) of Earth and has a diameter greater than 140 meters (459 feet).
Despite being seven times further away than the moon when it comes close, the asteroid is classified as a Near Earth Object (NEO) and is being tracked by the space agency.
“NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been pushed into orbits by the gravity of nearby planets that allow them to enter Earth’s environment,” NASA said.
‘Comets, which consist mainly of water ice with embedded dust grains, originally formed in the cold outer planetary system, while most rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
‘Scientific interest in comets and asteroids is largely due to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant of the solar system’s formation process some 4.6 billion years ago.’
According to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, on average every 5,000 years, Earth is hit by a rock the size of a football field, and every million years by a civilization-ending asteroid.
Asteroid 2008 OS7 won’t come our way again until 2032, but it will be a much more distant encounter, at a distance of 45 million miles.