A “potentially hazardous” asteroid is going to pass by Earth on 14 September, as per the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Known as 2020 QL2, the asteroid is over 30.48 cm (393 feet) in diameter which is more extensive than two expert American football fields set up. According to the information given out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA, the rock is relied upon to fly past our planet at a speed of 38,624.256 kilometers every hour. The asteroid will come as close as 6.7 million kilometers to the Earth.
The close Earth object (NEO) with its monstrous size and proximity, nonetheless, gets no opportunity of hitting our homeworld, guaranteed the space agency. NASA characterizes a NEO as a space object that has a perihelion distance under 1.3 astronomical units (au). Here, perihelion is where the Earth is nearest to the sun.
In spite of the fact that comets can likewise be close Earth objects, NASA says that most of the NEOs are asteroids. Then again, Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are those that have the Earth Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID) of 0.05 au (or 7.4 million kilometers) or less and measure in excess of 460 feet in diameter.
This asteroid will pass by our planet around 15 days after another conceivably dangerous asteroid called ‘2011 ES4’ had flown past our planet. The space rock had come as close as 1.2 lakh kilometer from Earth and NASA had said that it was the nearest approach of an asteroid of its size in the ten years to come. The asteroid was between 22 to 50 meters wide and had passed by us on 1 September.