A gigantic asteroid about the size of the Burj Khalifa is on a path that will take it near Earth, but we are not in any danger.
An absolutely huge asteroid that is similar in size to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, is going to narrowly miss the Earth in a couple of weeks. Dubbed asteroid 2002 AJ129, it will come within 2.6 million miles of Earth, which is about the equivalent of 10 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
That may not sound like much, but it is well within the 4.6 million miles necessary to be classified by NASA as a “potentially dangerous” asteroid. The asteroid is moving at a speed of 76,000 miles per hour, and were it to hit Earth, it would cause untold devastation to our planet most likely.
“We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Our calculations indicate that asteroid 2002 AJ129 has no chance – zero – of colliding with Earth on Feb. 4 or any time over the next 100 years.”
That speed is much higher than most objects passing by Earth, and it is mainly a result of the orbit of the asteroid, which flies near the sun. As the asteroid’s name, 2002 AJ129, would imply, scientists have been tracking the asteroid for more than 14 years and are confident in their calculations that it will pass nowhere near Earth on Feb. 4.