NASA, the United States space agency is tracking an asteroid that will make its close approach on March 1, 2020. The space agency's tracking system revealed that this asteroid dubbed 2017 BM123 has a size of 110 meters, and it is currently screeching across space at a mindblowing speed of 29,034 kilometres per hour.
When will this asteroid make its close approach?
Current calculations suggest that this asteroid will make its close approach with Earth at 12.45 PM GMT (07.45 AM EST). At the time of its close approach, this deadly space rock will be around 4.01 million miles away from the earth. For humans, this distance may seem quite huge, but considering the vastness of the universe, this distance is short, and this factor makes this space rock a near-earth object.
Even though the chance of a potential collision with this asteroid is nil, space experts believe that space rocks like these have the potential to wipe out a city in a fraction of a second. It should be noted that the meteor that exploded in the skies of Chelyabinsk in 2013 had a size of just 20 meters, but the mid-air explosion injured thousands of people and even caused considerable structural damage to buildings.
As per space experts, if an asteroid measuring more than 50 meters undergo a mid-air explosion in the skies, it will unleash energy equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima during World War II.
Small asteroids pose a threat to earth
Recently, Alan Harris, Emeritus Professor and senior scientist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) revealed that small asteroids are actually posing threat to earth as most of these space rocks go undetected. Harris claimed that NASA is very successful in tracking big asteroids that could result in a doomsday scenario, but on the other hand, most of the asteroids similar to the one that created chaos in Chelyabinsk miss the radar.
