In a new report, scientists have said that a 427-foot pyramid-shaped asteroid is all set to fly by Earth on Sunday (December 8). The Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies, located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has claimed that the object, dubbed as VH5 2019, will harmlessly fly past around 4.27 million miles from Earth at a speed of 6.1 miles per second. According to reports, the pyramid-shaped asteroid has dimensions of 57 meters (187 feet) by 130 meters (426.5 feet).
This news of upcoming asteroid comes after the massive 2,000-foot asteroid flew past our planet last month. It is said that VH5 2019 is one of five asteroids which are due to fly past Earth over the weekend. However, all of them are at safe distances.
In 2017, An asteroid named 2010 NY65, which was of a size of a skyscraper, flew past Earth at about eight times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
PDCO to rack asteroids and comets
Due to repeated incidents of asteroids in the past, NASA launched a new office called The Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) in 2016. The aim of PDCO was to track asteroids and comets that come too close to our planet.
Based on a latest study, scientists have said that asteroids have been crashing into the Earth at nearly three times their previous rate over the last 290 million years. However, they are not sure about the exact reason behind this.
Out of all the previous ones, the celestial body that had a major impact on Earth was the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. It had an explosive impact on Earth that was 10 billion times bigger than the bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima and the debris would fly high into the air eventually escaping the Earth's gravity. When the size of the asteroid was compared, experts found that it was only 6.8 to 50.3 miles in diameter.
