The asteroid, dubbed Asteroid 2009 WB105, will make its closest approach to the planet just after noon on November 25. NASA’s scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, expect WB105 to show up around 12.14pm GMT (UTC). The barreling asteroid is estimated to measure somewhere in the range of 173.8ft to 393.7ft (53m to 120m) in diameter.
A 393.7ft-wide asteroid is approximately 1.25-times larger than Big Ben’s clock tower in London and 1.29-times as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York.
At the same time, the space rock towers over St Paul’s Cathedral and is just 49.2ft (15m) shorter than the London Eye.
Even NASA’s smaller size estimate paints an image of an incredibly formidable asteroid.
At 173.8ft in diameter, the asteroid is taller than Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London, and is about as tall as the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy.
Much smaller asteroids have been known to cause considerable damage and injuries upon impact with the Earth.
The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor in Russia for instance, which injured around 1,500 people, was estimated to measure around 65.61ft (20m) in diameter.
The meteor injured the residents of Chelyabinsk after it exploded above the city and the shockwave blew up windows in a wide radius.
According to Dr Bruce Betts, The Planetary Society, space rocks on this scale typically strike once or twice a century.
He said: “Small asteroids – few metres – hit frequently and burn up in the atmosphere and do little damage.
“Chelyabinsk size asteroids – about 20m that hit in 2013 – create shock waves that shatter windows and cause injuries.
“Tunguska sized – about 40m that hit Siberia in 1908 – could completely destroy a city or create a tsunami. Larger asteroids that hit on average less often could cause regional destruction.”
Thankfully, Asteroid WB105 will not come close enough to strike the Earth but its trajectory is near enough for NASA to pay attention.
Asteroid WB105 is a so-called Near Earth Object (NEO) on an Earth Close Approach.
NEOs are all asteroids and comets which approach our home world with 30 million miles (50 million km) of its orbit.
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Dr Betts explained: “They are considered the objects that represent a possible danger to the Earth.
“NEOs consist of NEAs – Near Earth Asteroids – and NECs – Near Earth Comets.”
The asteroid tracked by NASA is expected to approach the planet from a distance of approximately 0.03893 astronomical units (au) or 15.15 Lunar Distances (LD).
This is approximately the equivalent of 3.6 million miles (5.8 million km) or more than 15-times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
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To the average person, this might seem like a lifetime away, but astronomers realise this is a close encounter on the cosmic scale of distances.
And despite space being, for the most part, a whole lot of emptiness, Dr Betts said the Earth is big enough to occasionally attract space rocks with its gravity.
He said: “The more we discover and track near Earth asteroids, the closer we’ll be to answering more definitively when the next damaging asteroid will hit Earth.”
On Sunday, Asteroid WB105 will barrel through space at breakneck speeds of about 42,233mph or 18.88km per second.
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