The year 2020 has not been memorable for the citizens of the planet. While COVID-19 has brought the entire world to a standstill, in India, cyclones on both the east and west coasts have disturbed the morale of the people.
Now adding to this, it has been reported that three asteroids will be flying very close to earth in June. After the initial bout of asteroids flying by close to the earth, this month will host another set of asteroids that will fly by even closer to earth.
It has been revealed in NASA’s Near-Earth Object Browser at the Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) that a large number of space rocks will approach Earth in close range, starting this weekend, on Saturday.
The three asteroids
This is the first of the large asteroids that will breach the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 AU (7.48 million kilometers). It is said that this asteroid will make a close approach to earth on June 6th at 3:20 AM UTC. During the fly-by, asteroid 2002 NN4 will be at a relative velocity of 40,140 kmph.
Following this monster asteroid, asteroid 2013 XA22 will breach the MOID on Monday, June 8 at 3:40 PM UTC. It will come significantly closer than the first asteroid.
The asteroid 2010 NY65 will cross Earth on Wednesday, June 24, at 6:44 AM UTC. The diameter of this asteroid will fall somewhere in between the other two. However, among the three, this asteroid has the highest relative velocity.
No alarms as of now
As of now though, there has been no alert announced by the concerned authorities. If you take the monster asteroid 2002 NN4 too, even in its closest point to earth, the distance will still be 13 times of the distance between earth and moon.
Source: News 18
