NASA lists an asteroid along the Golden Gate Bridge for ‘close proximity’
NASA has listed an asteroid nearly as high as the iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on its “Close Approach” page.
The space agency says the 2020 PM7 is scheduled to fly near Tuesday and will reach an altitude of 200 meters.
This makes it nearly the height of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is 227 meters high.
Although there is very little risk of it hitting Earth, it is listed on NASA’s Near Earth Objects (NEOs) approach page.
This means that astronomers will observe the massive space rock as it passes.
It is estimated to fly past a whopping 18,633 mph.
But the rock is expected to pass 1,783,862 miles across our planet.
Image credit: Getty Images
It comes after one asteroid, 2020 SW, passed through Earth on Thursday near us by some weather satellites.
The rock was discovered only last week, but it crosses Earth at an estimated distance of 0.07 lunar (LD) from Earth, which is about 17,000 miles.
It measures up to 9.7 meters, according to estimates.
Image credit: Getty Images
In contrast, the 2020 RA2, which was listed on the flights list on Wednesday, is down at 18.36 Libyan dinars, which is around 4,384,431 miles away.
Before 2020, the virtual telescope project said in a statement: “On September 24, 2020, the near-Earth 2020 SW asteroid will have a very close, but safe, encounter with us, about 27,000 kilometers from Earth, 7% of the average Lunar distance.
“The near-Earth asteroid 2020 SW, detected by MLS on September 18, 2020 and announced the next day by the Minor Planet Center, has an estimated diameter in the range of 4.3 – 9.7 meters (Source: NASA / JPL).
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