Asteroid size of delivery truck to come very close to Earth, but will miss
- Asteroid will zoom 3,600km above the southern tip of South America on Thursday
- It will be one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded
An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will whip past Earth on Thursday night, one of the closest such encounters ever recorded.
Nasa insists it will be a near miss with no chance of the asteroid hitting Earth.
Nasa said Wednesday that this newly discovered asteroid will zoom 3,600km (2,200 miles) above the southern tip of South America. That’s 10 times closer than the bevy of communication satellites circling overhead.
The closest approach will occur at 7.27pm EST (8.37am Hong Kong time Friday).
Even if the space rock came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites.
Nasa’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.