(BIN) – An asteroid the size of a house was discovered by NASA last week, which was just in time to announce its near-miss on Wednesday night. Asteroid 2020 GH2 is estimated to be 43 to 70 feet wide according to Space.com.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office assured Earth-dwellers that our planet was safe from destruction, tweeting a video that attempted to put a near-earth pass into perspective. The video depicted the Earth as a basketball, the moon as a tennis ball 25 feet away, and the asteroid responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs as a grain of salt “a couple of blocks away.”
But GH2 was not a couple of blocks away. GH2 passed by the Earth at a distance of 220,000 miles, which put it about 16,000 miles closer than the moon. NASA is tracking around 20,000 near-Earth asteroids. Any asteroid about 500 feet or larger with an orbit that brings it within 4.7 million miles of Earth is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, NASA officials have said.
At the moment, scientists have identified more than 20,000 near-earth objects (NEO) and around 40 new ones are being discovered every week. Of the known NEOs, around 5,000 of these are classed as “potentially hazardous.” READ MORE
