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HUGE Asteroid Set to CRASH Into Earths' Orbit on Monday
HUGE 18,000mph Apollo-Class Asteroid Set to Zoom Past Earth in Close Approach
The space agency NASA is keeping a close eye on the 984 ft wide asteroid as it - hopefully - shoots safely past us this weekend
Daily Mirror 21 NOV 2021
Illustration of a huge asteroid in collision course on planet Earth
The Apollo-class asteroid, called 3361 Orpheus, is 984 feet wide and is travelling at around 18,000 miles per hour
Earth has not seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years ago
The US space agency NASA has warned that an asteroid three times bigger than Big Ben will shoot past Earth on Sunday.
The Apollo-class asteroid, called 3361 Orpheus, is 984 feet wide and is travelling at around 18,000 miles per hour.
NASA will be keeping a close eye on the huge space rock, which has made it onto the space agency's 'Close Approach' list.
But there's no need to panic just yet – the asteroid will pass through a distance of 3.5 million miles from our home planet.
Anything that passes within 120 million miles is considered a Near Earth Object (NEO), a term used to describe "comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood."
Anything that comes within 4.65 million miles is a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), a classification given to space rocks larger than approximately 100m.
So-called 3361 Orpheus was first discovered on 24 April 1982 at the National Astronomical Observatory in Chile.
The celestial rock orbits the sun every 486 days and crosses that of Mars and Earth, and approaches Venus as well.
It has previously passed by Earth in 1937, 1978 and 1982, and will again in 2021 and 2025. This time, it is expected to pass us around 7pm UTC on Sunday.
It is comparable in size to a football field, or three times as large as London's Elizabeth Tower, also known as Big Ben.
NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies regularly checks 'close approaches' to follow asteroids and comets which are heading towards or near the Earth's orbit.
NASA believes every 2,000 years or so, a meteoroid the size of a football field is likely to make its way through the atmosphere and cause destruction.
It is only every few million years that a rock large enough to threaten life on Earth will appear on the radar; Earth has not seen an asteroid of apocalyptic scale since the space rock that wiped out dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Most asteroids don't come into contact with Earth's atmosphere but in rare instances, the giant space rocks can impact weather systems.
Earlier this year, NASA revealed a new study where it looked into the likelihood of asteroid Bennu smashing into Earth between now and the year 2300.
The rock, around one-third of a mile wide, is listed as a "potentially hazardous object" to humanity, was first discovered back in 1999.
Bennu, a C-type rock, is one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in the solar system.
New data from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft predict the asteroid's course through the solar system and raised the overall probability for impact on September 24, 2182.
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