Alert! Series of ‘FIFA stadium’ sized asteroids to pass Earth this week. Details here
FIFA-accredited stadium". The largest of the five, Asteroid 2008 OS7, was first spotted in 2008 by NASA. It will zoom past Earth on 2 February, 2024, at a distance of 1.77 million miles, which is relatively close in cosmic terms.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) keeps track of the next five asteroid approaches on its Asteroid Watch website, and 2008 OS7 is one of them. But 2008 OS7 is not the only space rock that will fly by our planet this week. Four other asteroids, ranging from the size of a house to the size of a building, will also make their appearances.
Meanwhile, Japan's space agency said Thursday that its first lunar mission hit the tiny patch of the moon's surface it was aiming for, in a successful demonstration of its pinpoint landing system — although the probe appears to be lying upside-down. On Sunday, Asteroid 2024 AU4, which is about 260 feet wide, will pass by Earth at a safe distance of 3.92 million miles. On Tuesday, another asteroid, 2007 EG, which is roughly the size of an airplane, will come a bit closer, at 3.8 million miles.
On Thursday, two more asteroids will visit us: Asteroid 2024 BY, which is around the size of a house, will whizz by at 1.57 million miles, and Asteroid 2003 BM4, which is also airplane-sized, will sail by at 2.06 million miles. To put these distances in perspective, the average distance between the Earth and the moon is about 239,000 miles, and the distance between the Earth and the sun is about 93 million miles, according to NASA. NASA says that most of the near-Earth objects (NEOs) have orbits that do not bring them too close to Earth, and therefore do not pose any risk of impact.
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