This week, Earth will witness a series of close encounters with five asteroids, one of which is as big as a Fifa-accredited football stadium. The largest of them, Asteroid 2008 OS7, is about 890 feet across and was first spotted in 2008 by NASA. It will zoom past Earth on Feb. 2, 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. Although it poses no threat of collision, its proximity is enough to raise some eyebrows.
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.
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When will these asteroids pass the Earth?
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 aeroplane, 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. However, some of them, called potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), are large enough and close enough to warrant more attention.
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NASA defines PHAs as asteroids and comets that are larger than 500 feet and that can come within 4.7 million miles of Earth.
One such PHA is Apophis, the so-called ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid, which is a massive rock measuring about 370 yards across.
In December, NASA launched OSIRIS-APEX to study Apophis, which is expected to fly by Earth at a stunningly close distance of 20,000 miles in 2029. NASA says that this is the closest an asteroid of this size has ever come to Earth since “the dawn of record history.”
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
