NASA was forced to issue a new alert for the Earth because of two new asteroids that are heading towards our planet at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, both of which will arrive near the Earth these days. The first asteroid for which NASA issued an alert has the name 2017 TJ4, it is traveling at a speed of 32.000 KM/h at the moment, and according to the calculations made by the space agency, it will reach Earth on Sunday.
NASA discovered this asteroid in 2017, and claims that it has a diameter of 24-53 meters, so at a speed of 32.000 KM/h it will cause significant damage if it hits the planet Earth. According to those from NASA, this asteroid is one of the Aten category, but to the joy of everyone on Earth, it seems that there is no indication that it would have any impact, as it will pass at a distance considerable.
Two DANGEROUS ASTEROIDS FORCE NASA to Issue a New ALERT
NASA also issued an alert for a second asteroid named 2019 SL7, which was discovered during this year and moves at a speed of 61.000 KM/h, almost 2 times faster than the other one. The good part about this asteroid is that it has a diameter of only 11 meters, so if it were to hit the Earth, even with such a high speed, it would not cause such great destruction, according to NASA's calculations.
"NASA has predicted that Asteroid TJ4 will close in on Earth at around 12.46pm BST (11.46am UTC) on Saturday 5 October. When that happens, NASA's Next Asteroids said the space rock will fly by at speeds of about 19.863 km/h (31.986 km/h). The asteroid known as 2019 SL7, which will fly past Earth on October 9, has piqued NASA's interest. At 21 meters wide, the space rock is only twice the size of a double-decker bus, which is 11,1 meters. Asteroid 2019 SL7 is accelerating at an astonishing 17,1 kilometers per second – or 61.500 kilometers per hour.”
NASA claims that this second asteroid will approach at a distance of 538.162 kilometers from the Earth, which is equivalent to 1.4 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. Despite the fact that the second asteroid will pass at a considerable distance from the Earth, those from NASA still include it in the category of cosmic objects that pass near the Earth, so they consider it to be dangerous because its trajectory can change at any time.
NASA issues alerts about asteroids approaching the Earth almost every day, but rarely do we talk about some that get this close, or even closer.
