The diameter of a space object is equal to the length of a football field and big enough to flatten a small city but it poses no danger to our planet.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that on Friday, May 14, asteroid 2015 KJ19 will approach Earth at a minimum distance of 5.8 million kilometers.
According to NASA, the space body, the size of 118 meters (the length of a football field), moves at a high speed – 23 kilometers per second, or more than 82,000 kilometers per hour.
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At 118 meters, 2015 KJ19 would be big enough to flatten a small city.
Thankfully for us, the asteroid will miss by some distance.
Analysis from NASA shows the space rock will pass by at slightly more than 15 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 15.1 lunar distances (LDs).
One LD is 384,000 kilometers, so the asteroid will come nowhere near to our planet.
Nonetheless, it is still close enough for NASA to consider the asteroid to be a near Earth Object (NEO).
NEOs provide the likes of NASA the opportunity to look at the history of the solar system.
NASA said on its JPL website:
The European Space Agency (ESA) warned that NEOs can pose a threat to Earth.
It said:
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Image Credit: Getty