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A newly discovered bus-sized asteroid will glide safely across Earth today (May 3), passing a distance of just over half the moon.
Asteroid 2020 JA will fly through Earth at a range of approximately 148,000 miles (238,000 km) when it passes today. That is approximately 0.62 times the distance from Earth to the moon. (The moon is approximately 239,000 miles, or 385,000 km, on average.)
The 2020 JA asteroid is between 31 and 72 feet wide (9.6 to 22 meters), according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. NASA’s Asteroid Watch widget listed the diameter of the asteroid at approximately 40 feet (12m) and compared its size to a city bus.
Related: Potentially dangerous asteroids (images)
Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Ceccano, Italy captured a 2020 JA image with a telescope. In the image, the asteroid appears as a small spot of light in a star field.
Small asteroids like 2020 JA pass Earth several times a month and generally pose no risk to our planet, NASA officials said. For example, a small asteroid named 2020 HS7 passed Earth at a distance of 23,000 miles (36,400 km) on April 28, but it did not pose any risk of impact.
Scientists at NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office regularly track near-Earth objects like comets and asteroids to look for possible impact threats to our planet. To date, astronomers have found 22,776 near-Earth objects, more than 95% of them discovered through surveys funded by NASA, the agency said.
New asteroids like 2020 H7 and 2020 JA have been discovered all the time at a rate of 30 each day, NASA said.
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
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