A Massive 1,280-Foot Asteroid Will Skim Past Earth Next Sunday At More Than 58,000 MPH – The Inquisitr News

Next Sunday, a truly imposing dwelling rock will swing by to pay Earth a shut consult with. Dubbed asteroid 2019 JB1, the ambitious dwelling rock is gargantuan ample to dwarf each the Colossal Pyramid of Giza and the Statue of Liberty.

First came upon on the starting save of the month, the 2019 JB1 has been categorized as a shut to-Earth object (NEO). These objects are celestial bodies, corresponding to asteroids or comets, “which beget been nudged by the gravitational appeal of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood,” explains NASA’s Heart For Shut to-Earth Object Overview (CNEOS).

While many NEOs are acknowledged to poke via our nook of dwelling time and again, time and again flying previous Earth in their scoot all over the solar, right here’s no longer the case for asteroid 2019 JB1. After studying its trajectory, tempo, and proximity to our planet, asteroid trackers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, beget sure that the wandering dwelling rock will ticket most titillating one flyby of Earth. After that, asteroid 2019 JB1 will vanish into the cosmos with out returning for the foreseeable future.

In accordance with CNEOS, the asteroid is estimated to measure wherever between 558 toes and 1,280 toes in diameter. At the greater discontinue of NASA’s size estimate, the dwelling rock will likely be nearly three cases as gargantuan because the Colossal Pyramid of Giza and a runt over four cases taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Even on the lower discontinue of that size estimate, asteroid 2019 JB1 would nonetheless be regarded as fine hefty. At 558 toes wide, the dwelling rock would nonetheless be bigger than each of those iconic landmarks.

While the asteroid’s impressive scale can completely be unnerving, there isn’t any longer this form of thing as a reason for alarm. Its shut reach all over with Earth will likely be a wonderfully safe one, as it’ll most titillating bring it within a pair of million miles of the planet’s surface, the JPL announced earlier this day.

The wayfaring asteroid is predicted to harmlessly fly previous planet Earth late at evening on Also can unbiased 19. Hurtling via dwelling at inconceivable speeds of bigger than 58,000 mph, asteroid 2019 JB1 will produce its closest reach to Earth at 11: 21 p.m. ET.

In the center of its upcoming shut flyby, the dwelling rock will buzz Earth from a distance of 4 million miles away. This reach that, for the time being of its closest reach, the asteroid will zoom previous our planet’s surface at somewhat lower than 17 cases the distance to the moon.

While that will maybe well maybe additionally sound bask in a gigantic distance by terrestrial standards, 4 million miles is a stone’s throw away in cosmic phrases.

“Trace that a ‘shut’ passage astronomically may maybe maybe well maybe additionally be very a long way-off in human phrases: millions or even millions of kilometers,” CNEOS suggestions out.