TPO - On June 28, asteroid 2011 UL21 will come within 5 million miles of Earth, making it one of the largest space rocks to come close to Earth in 125 years.
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Illustration of asteroid hurtling towards Earth |
A giant asteroid dubbed a “ planet killer” will make a very close approach to Earth this weekend, hurtling safely past our planet at around 58,000 mph. The “potentially hazardous” mountain-sized object is one of the largest space rocks to fly close to Earth in more than a century.
The asteroid, 2011 UL21, is a near-Earth asteroid, meaning its orbit sometimes takes it within 1.3 astronomical units (AU) of the sun — or about 1.3 times the average distance between Earth and the sun. It orbits our host star every three years. Based on previous observations, the asteroid is between 1.7 and 3.9 kilometers (1.1 and 2.4 miles) wide, according to SpaceReference.org, meaning it is larger than 99 percent of known near-Earth asteroids, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
2011 UL21 is likely to be at least 10 times smaller than the largest meteorite ever to hit Earth, the Vredefort asteroid, and about five times smaller than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. However, while any potential impact from 2011 UL21 is less severe than those historic impacts, the asteroid still has the potential to cause continental-scale damage and eject debris into the atmosphere to cause significant climate changes, which is why it is considered a “planet killer.”
On June 28, UL21 will zoom past at a distance of about 6.6 million kilometers (4.1 million miles) from Earth, closer than it has been to our planet in at least 110 years, according to simulations by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). At that distance, it is considered a potentially hazardous object by NASA. However, it is still about 17 times farther from Earth than the moon.
While this asteroid poses no threat to Earth – now or in the future – it is interesting because it is one of the 10 largest asteroids to pass within 7.5 million kilometers of our planet since 1900, Gianluca Masi, astrophysicist and director of the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP), wrote in a recent statement.
You can observe the phenomenon from the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Ceccano, Italy starting at 4 p.m. ET on June 28, with close approach predicted to occur 15 minutes later.
You can also spot the asteroid in the night sky with a good telescope. It will be at its brightest on June 28 and 29, and will be visible from the Northern Hemisphere if you know where to look. At its brightest, it will be about as bright as Proxima Centauri, the closest known star to the sun.
It won't be until 2089 that asteroid 2011 UL21 will come this close to Earth when it reaches a distance of 2.7 million kilometers around Earth, two and a half times closer to us than its current approach, according to JPL simulations.
There is no known chance that any planet-killer asteroid will hit Earth for at least the next 1,000 years. However, there will be some close encounters with smaller asteroids in the next few years. For example, the asteroid Apophis, which is big enough to wipe out an entire city, will pass closer to Earth than some satellites in 2029.
According to Live Science
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