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On September 8, an asteroid known as 2020 PT4 will shoot alongside Earth and the Moon, in what NASA describes as a “close to Earth” approach. The asteroid is a space rock 36 meters long, making it almost twice as long as an 18-wheeler.
NASA has said that the asteroid is traveling at a whopping 12.6 kilometers per second, or 45,360 kilometers per hour.
At that speed, it could travel from the UK to New York more than eight times in a single hour.
The space rock will pass 4.9 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, that is, 1,883,153 kilometers.
Nonetheless, NASA has described it as a near-Earth object (NEO), which means it is the perfect opportunity to study the solar system.
While the chances of a major asteroid hitting Earth are small (NASA believes there is a one in 300,000 chance each year that a space rock that could cause regional damage will hit), the devastating prospect is not impossible.
That’s why there are now plans underway that could help Earth get out of the asteroids.
NASA is currently studying the asteroid Bennu, where its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft arrived last year.
Part of the reason NASA is sending the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft is to gather more information about the space rock that is 500 meters long.
NASA fears that the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out a country on Earth, could hit our planet in the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
OSIRIS-REx recently completed a major milestone in its quest to collect samples from the asteroid Bennu after getting closer to the space rock than ever before.
By collecting samples, NASA hopes to uncover the secrets of the solar system, as Bennu is a remnant of the formation of our galactic neighborhood about 4.6 billion years ago.
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