Giant Asteroid Expected To Pass By Earth This Weekend

Huge asteroid TWICE the size of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, will pass Earth on Friday – and is the biggest space rock to come our way in 2022 -Daily Mail

The asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) is about the size of the Burj Khalifa and will pass by Earth in 2022. Its size can also be compared to four times the height of the Empire State Building.

NASA has classified asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) as potentially hazardous, but it will pass by Earth at a distance of 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) on Friday.

There are around 1,500 potentially hazardous asteroids, which could cause devastation if they were to land on Earth.

The asteroid 7335 (1989 JA) will make its closest approach to Earth on Friday at 14:26 UTC. It will travel at a speed of 29,348 miles/hour.

NASA hasn’t written off the chance of an asteroid collision in the near future, but warned that its NEO catalogue isn’t complete, meaning an unpredicted impact could occur at ‘any time’.

NASA launched its first ever ‘planetary defence’ spacecraft to deflect an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth. The probe will hit an asteroid at 15,000mph (24,100km/h) and change its orbit by a fraction of a per cent.

DART will be the world’s first planetary defense test mission, crashing into a small moonlet asteroid to slightly change its orbit. This will help us prepare for an actual asteroid threat.

NASA’s asteroid tracker classifies it as a “potentially hazardous” Near-Earth Object because it enters the zone within 120 million miles of the sun, bringing its orbital path relatively close to Earth’s.

A rocky giant that orbits the sun every 861 days is going to collide with Earth in 2022. The collision will deflect the asteroid’s current orbital path and put humanity one step closer to preventing a global climate disaster.

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