The asteroid, named 2024 MT1, is bigger than London’s famous Westminster Abbey at 260 feet and will pass within 932,056 miles of Earth today, NASA said after tracking it through space
An asteroid bigger than Westminster Abbey will speed past Earth today, according to NASA scientists.
The space rock, named 2024 MT1, is just bigger than the famous London landmark at 260 feet and is rocketing through space at a terrifying 65,215 kilometres per hour (40,522 mph). It’s expected to make its closest approach to Earth today on July 8, and will pass at a distance of approximately 932,056 miles from our home planet – a relatively close shave by astronomical standards.
It was first picked up by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, a hi-tech system which uses ground-based telescopes to track and characterises asteroids and comets that fly near Earth.
If larger than about 150 metres and approaching within 4.6 million miles of our planet, NASA can categorise close-by space rocks as a “potentially hazardous object”. But 2024 MT-1 has not been given this designation, as it is too small.
It comes after an asteroid nearly a mile wide missed Earth late last month. Scientists tracked two close approaches by large space rocks on Thursday 27 June and Saturday 29 June. The most recent, asteroid 2024 MK, was 500-feet-wide, passing within about 184,000 miles (295,000 kilometres) of Earth. While the larger asteroid 2011 UL21 passed Earth on 27 June at a distance of 4.1 million miles (6.6 million kilometres), or about 17 times the distance between the Moon and Earth.
Spotted only 13 days before its closest approach to Earth, the object was classified as being potentially hazardous, but calculations of its future orbits show that it won’t pose a threat to our planet for the foreseeable future. NASA say the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone planetary radar had “a busy few days” observing 2024 MK and 2011 UL21 as they passed us.
The space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California tracked them as they flew by our planet. NASA said: “One turned out to have a little moon orbiting it, while the other had been discovered only 13 days before its closest approach to Earth. There was no risk of either near-Earth object impacting our planet, but the radar observations taken during these two close approaches will provide valuable practice for planetary defence, as well as information about their sizes, orbits, rotation, surface details, and clues as to their composition and formation.”
