The independent space research agency of the United States, NASA, has given a warning that an asteroid, which can cause a hazard and is bigger than the Edinburgh Castle is approaching the Earth.
The space rock that is bigger than the popular landmark in Scotland is going to make close approach to the Earth in the upcoming week. It has been tagged as 'potentially hazardous' by the space experts in the US because of its predicted closeness to the Earth, as reported by the Daily Record.
Asteroid Approaching Earth
The asteroid has been named Asteroid2020ND by NASA and it is huge in size, measuring in at 170 meters, thus it is bigger than the Edinburgh Castle, which is 135 meters in size. As confirmed by NASA, the space rock is going to make its closest approach to the Earth on July 24 and is going to come within just 0.034 astronomical units of Earth.
"Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid's potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs," the space agency mentioned.
"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 neighborhood. 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," NASA said on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website.
"The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) formed from an agglomeration of billions of comets and the leftover bits and pieces from this formation process are the comets we see today," the space agency added stating that the asteroids, nowadays, are bits and pieces of leftover f the initial cluster of the inner planets, which includes the Mercury, Venus, Earth and also the Mars.
