Post by StarVega on Sept 1, 2017 22:06:12 GMT
Forget the Eclipse, the ‘Largest’ Asteroid Ever Tracked by NASA Is About to Roar Past Earth
NASA’s Paul Chodas wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Planet Earth isn’t about to get obliterated by a giant killer asteroid.
Nevertheless, when the 2.7-mile-wide object known as Asteroid Florence roars past Earth at a blistering eight miles a second—its closest fly-by of our planet in over 600 years—on Sept. 1 at 2:40 p.m. ET, it’s still going to be a “remarkable” event.
“It’s the closest that an asteroid this large has ever come to the Earth,” says Chodas, manager of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, located in Pasadena, California. “So it’s remarkable from that point of view. On the other hand, it’s passing by at a safe distance, roughly 18 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.”
That works out to about 4.4 million miles, something Chodas describes as “pretty far from a human perspective, but astronomically it’s a close approach, a remarkably close approach.
people.com/human-interest/largest-asteroid-ever-tracked-nasa-past-earth/
NASA’s Paul Chodas wants to make one thing perfectly clear: Planet Earth isn’t about to get obliterated by a giant killer asteroid.
Nevertheless, when the 2.7-mile-wide object known as Asteroid Florence roars past Earth at a blistering eight miles a second—its closest fly-by of our planet in over 600 years—on Sept. 1 at 2:40 p.m. ET, it’s still going to be a “remarkable” event.
“It’s the closest that an asteroid this large has ever come to the Earth,” says Chodas, manager of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, located in Pasadena, California. “So it’s remarkable from that point of view. On the other hand, it’s passing by at a safe distance, roughly 18 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.”
That works out to about 4.4 million miles, something Chodas describes as “pretty far from a human perspective, but astronomically it’s a close approach, a remarkably close approach.
people.com/human-interest/largest-asteroid-ever-tracked-nasa-past-earth/
