A NASA-tracked asteroid travelling at more than
29,000mph will shoot past the Earth this weekend, NASA’s asteroid trackers have
revealed. The
asteroid, dubbed by NASA Asteroid 2019 CB2, is barreling towards a so-called
“Earth Close Approach”. NASA’s scientists have pinpointed the asteroid’s
passage down to 1.20am GMT (UTC) on Sunday, February 10. The incredible flyby
comes just five days after NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) first
observed the rock on February 2. As it zips by, Asteroid CB2 will breach speeds
of nearly 29,125mph or 13.02km per second.
This
means the asteroid is flying through space at breakneck speeds nearly 38-times
the speed of sound.
But
even as this happens, Earth can rest assured the space rock will not slam into
the planet at full speed. NASA’s JPL scientists estimate Asteroid CB2 will
near-miss the Earth by almost 650,000 miles (1.04 million miles). Asteroid CB2
is a so-called “Near-Earth Object” (NEO), which is an asteroid or comet on an
orbital path crisscrossing that of Earth’s.
When
NEOs traverse the void of the solar system, they occasionally come close to the
Earth and the Sun. NASA explained: “As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects
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.”
As
of February 5, 2019, NASA has discovered a total of 19,585 Near-Earth Asteroids
(NEAs). In human terms, this might seem far enough of a passage for comfort,
but on the cosmic scale of distances, CB2’s passage is extremely close.
More
than 8,500 of these space rocks measure more 460ft (140m) in diameter – these
are additionally dubbed “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids”.