Do not look up: A large asteroid will pass at a safe distance from Earth on 18/1

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A large asteroid, about a kilometer in diameter, is approaching Earth, but unlike Netflix’s “Do Not Look Up”, it will not land on our planet, but will pass on January 18 at a safe distance. almost two million kilometers, about five times the distance from Earth to the Moon – not so big for an asteroid of this size.

The big space rock called “7482 (1994 PC1)” is moving at a speed of 70,415 kilometers per hour and will not be so close to Earth again in this century, according to calculations made by astronomers of the US Space Agency (NASA). It was discovered in 1994 and has been found to complete one orbit around the Sun every 572 days. In 1933 it was closer to Earth, at a distance of 1.1 million km, and will not be so close again until 2105, according to estimates by NASA and Caltcech.

The asteroid is classified by NASA as potentially dangerous, a designation given to any asteroid with a diameter of more than 140 meters, which is less than 7.5 million kilometers from the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. A larger category is Near-Earth Objects (NEO), which approach less than 50 million kilometers from the Earth’s orbit.

To date, about 28,000 NEWs have been found, while around 3,000 new NEWs are discovered each year. As new more powerful telescopes are added in the coming years, the number of NEWs is expected to expand further. The items in the list of NEW are estimated – based on their orbit calculations – that they do not pose a threat to our planet in the next 100 years.

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