Asteroid tracker: Space rock as big as THREE busses set to swing by Earth

A space rock called 2020 SX3 will pass Earth at a safe distance next week, but it will swing by our planet’s orbit. Observations show the asteroid will be at its closest to our planet on Thursday, October 8. The asteroid is roughly 50 metres in length, making it almost three times as long as a double decker bus.

NASA analysis has revealed the space rock is travelling at a staggering 10.9 kilometres per second.

This means 2020 SX3 will zoom by our planet at almost 40,000 kilometres per hour.

In fact, by the time you finish reading this sentence, the asteroid would have travelled a staggering 76 kilometres.

NASA has designated the asteroid as an Apollo space rock.

Apollo asteroids are rocks which pass the orbital plane of Earth’s voyage around the Sun – although they usually pose no threat to us.

According to NASA, the asteroid will fly by at a safe distance of 1.7 million kilometres, which is 4.4 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Nonetheless, it is close enough to be considered a near Earth object (NEO).

NASA monitors NEOs as they provide a unique opportunity to gain a better insight into the history of the solar system.

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NASA explained: “NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.

“Composed mostly of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets originally formed in the cold outer planetary system while most of the rocky asteroids formed in the warmer inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

“The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago.

“The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) formed from an agglomeration of billions of comets and the left over bits and pieces from this formation process are the comets we see today.

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“Likewise, today’s asteroids are the bits and pieces left over from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets that include Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

“As the primitive, leftover building blocks of the solar system formation process, comets and asteroids offer clues to the chemical mixture from which the planets formed some 4.6 billion years ago.

“If we wish to know the composition of the primordial mixture from which the planets formed, then we must determine the chemical constituents of the leftover debris from this formation process – the comets and asteroids.”

source: express.co.uk