Asteroid the Size of a Blue Whale Predicted to Fly Past Earth by 2.2 Million Miles

In a recent declaration from the space agency - NASA, a space rock approximately three folds the size of a blue whale might fly past Earth on the 6^th of June 2022, Monday, at roughly 16,000 mph or about 26,000 in km/h.

Huge Asteroid may Pass the Earth by 2.2 Million Miles

(Photo : Photo by MORGAN SETTE/AFP via Getty Images)
TOPSHOT - JAXA's Hayabusa-2 probe's sample drop to earth after landing on and gathering material from an asteroid some 300 million kilometres from Earth is seen from Coober Pedy in South Australia on December 6, 2020. - Call it a special delivery: after six years in space, Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe is heading home, but only to drop off its rare asteroid samples before starting a new mission.

The space rock, dubbed 2021 GT2, according to the official statement released by authorities of the space agency - NASA, is expected to bypass Earth by even more than 2.2 million miles, that is roughly equivalent to 3.5 million kilometers, or approximately ten times the normal relative velocity among both Earth and the moon.

In the statement, the experts and academics alike has claimed that the year before last, cosmologists discovered the large asteroid and calculated its width to be somewhere around 121 and 272 feet (37 to 83 meters).

Whilst also it seems to be rather massive, since as claimed by experts the asteroid is between one three percentage points the size and shape of a blue whale. However, the experts has also informed that it is not wide and deep too much to be taken into account a possible threat to Earth, as per the experts working on the investigation.

News media website Flipboard similarly reported how the 2021 GT2 is an Aten-class celestial body, which means it circles the sun relatively keenly than Earth (every few 342 days in this instance) and overlaps Earth's atmosphere. Astrophysicists are aware of around 1,800 such space debris, most of which are particularly toxic.

Within a week following June 6, the comet's following close call encounter to Earth will be on January 26, 2034, when it will approach in less than 9 million miles (14.5 million km) of the planet Earth - far further off than the current flyby.

Furthermore, the space rock is classified as a near-Earth object, which refers to meteorites as well as space debris binaries that circle the solar radiation within 1.3 light years away.

It is an astronomical unit that is used to measure the travel time among both Earth and the sun, which is approximately 93 million miles or 149.6 million kilometers.

The Space exploration NASA tracks thousands upon thousands of these celestial bodies, making predictions their paths from today to hundreds of thousands of years from today. Researchers currently believe that no near-Earth objects present a hazard to Earth.

Also read: Millions of Tons of Extremely Reactive Chemicals Found Lingering in the Earth's Atmosphere

An Asteroid Thrice the Size of a Blue Whale

Nonetheless, astronomers would like to be prepared if a near-Earth comet's course changes unexpectedly due to an occurrence, such as one near-Earth space rock striking with the other and scattering enormous bits of wreckage all through the observable universe, as per the recent report published by Space, a online news website.

NASA is now exploring whether such a huge meteorite may be thrown off track by firing a projectile against it.

In November 2021, NASA Space shuttle the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), an asteroid-deflecting space probe that will collide head-on with the 530-foot-wide (160-meter) Dimorphos space debris in fall 2022.

The encounter will not kill the space debris, although it very might as well change its interplanetary course significantly, as initially disclosed by Live Science.

Related article: Huge Solar Flare Hurtling Towards Earth Due to Dead Sunspot