Big Asteroid approaching Earth

 Asteroid bigger than Empire State Building is approaching Earth

The study of asteroids is important. It can really be a marvellous field of study till all the space rocks are moving close to the Earth. It certainly must be a delight to see these world-ending space rocks do a flyby, a delight that dinosaurs could not get. It is precisely for the preservation of this happening and prevention of its conversion into sheer, existential fright that we always have our lenses towards the sky to be on the lookout for any of these asteroids coming our way.

Generally unknown to most of us, asteroids are shooting past the Earth fairly regularly but some of them have a close encounter with our home planet earth. Asteroid 2001 QQ142 is one such asteroid. This asteroid has been designated by NASA as a near-Earth space rock. It is expected that it will fly by Earth at a distance of only 5.5 million kilometres soon. This may look like a huge distance but considering cosmic distances, this is but a tiny stretch.

The asteroid on its own doesn't have any sinister motive. It's doing its thing and orbiting around the Sun. Earth just happens to be in the vicinity. It is approaching Earth at a mind-boggling speed of 23975 kilometres per hour. This makes it much faster than Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. The asteroid is nearly 2,200 feet wide. So it can be compared to a huge bridge. It is bigger than the iconic Empire State Building. When it flies by the Earth, it will not be the asteroid's first visit to Earth's neighbourhood. It came close to our eath on August 1, 1901. But at that time it maintained a safe distance and at its closest, it was 72 million kilometres away from Earth. It will come back to our earth again in January 2028 as per estimates.