Asteroid 13 Times Bigger Than India Gate To Skim Earth; Should You Be Worried?

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An asteroid 13 times bigger than the India Gate will fly astronomically very close to Earth at a lightning speed on August 10, 2019. As per a report by livescience.com, the asteroid '2006 QQ23' will fly within 0.049 astronomical units (4.6 million miles) of Earth. The celestial object is pacing at an approximate speed of 10,400 mph (16,740 km/h) and is identified as potentially hazardous.

 
Asteroid 13 Times Bigger Than The India Gate Is Headed Towards Earth

Asteroid 2006 QQ23 has an estimated diameter of 1,870 feet, which is 13.5 times the height of the 'India Gate' and is even bigger than the height of 'The Empire State' building. In short, it is a gigantic rock moving at an enormous speed of 16,740 km/h that can easily grate a big part of our planet within seconds.

 

But fret not; as the experts say that the celestial object is not going to hit our planet. Lindley Johnson and Kelly Fast, experts who track near-Earth objects (NEO) with NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, informed CNN that Asteroid 2006 QQ23 is "More or less benign." In fact, the Earth faces no imminent threat from any massive asteroid that can wipe out the entire life on the planet.

NASA constantly tracks all the celestial objects that come close to the Earth and might pose a threat to humanity or our planet's atmosphere. The detailed information of all the potential future Earth impact events is available on NASA's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies page. The space research organization tracks all such celestial objects with the help of Sentry- Earth Impact Monitoring system.

The automated collision monitoring system continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth. The system detects any possible collisions over the next 100 years. The website mentions that there are about 8,000 asteroids discovered until August 4, 2019.

About 900 of these celestial objects have an estimated diameter of 1000+ meters, making them much bigger than the Asteroid 2006 QQ23. Earth is closely visited by about six giant asteroids every 365 days.

NASA is currently working on the Psyche mission, which is readying for a 2022 launch. The Psyche mission is part of the space agency's Discovery Program, a series of lower-cost, highly focused robotic space missions.

As per NASA, the Psyche mission aims to understand the building blocks of planet formation by exploring firsthand of a wholly new and uncharted type of world. NASA headquarters in Washington has approved the mission to begin the final design and fabrication phase.

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