Asteroid almost as tall as Blackpool Tower hurtling towards Earth's orbit at speed



An asteroid almost as tall as the Blackpool Tower in England is hurtling towards Earth’s orbit at an astonishing speed.

 

The space rock, which is being watched by NASA, is on track to enter Earth’s orbit on Tuesday November 10, 2020.

 

It is expected to zip past Earth at a speed of 25,050 miles per house, which is the equivalent to 11.20 kilometer per second.

 

NASA estimates the rock, dubbed 2020 UL3, fly by at 12:48 Eastern Standard Time, which is 6.48 British Standard Time.

 

NASA predicts the asteroid to be anywhere between 53m and 130m, which is the equivalent of 173 and a whopping 426 foot.

 

To put this into perspective, the Blackpool Tower, which was built on 14 May 1894 and stands on the seafront of Blackpool, England, is around 154m.

 

Without its spire, the tower is just above 135m, making the asteroid almost the size as the iconic seaside tourist attraction at its upper limit.

 

UL3 has been identified as an Apollo asteroid, which is an asteroid that crosses Earth’s orbit as it passes through space.

 

It is also classed as a Near Earth Object, which according to NASA, is a term used to describe comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.

 

To be classed as an NEO an object also has to come within 1.3 astronomical units.

 

That may seem close, but asteroid UL3 is currently estimated to passed through space at a a distance of 0.039 astronomical units from Earth.

 

To put this into perspective, this is the equivalent to 3,625,276 Earth land miles.

 

It is highly unlikely UL3 will cause any issues for Earth and life on our planet, but in rare instances they can cause problems for weather systems.

 

Earth hasn't seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66million years ago.

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