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Space rock known as 2020 VL1 is currently moving towards Earth’s orbit. NASA monitoring services revealed that the asteroid is set to cross Earth’s orbit on Friday, November 13.
While the date is considered unfortunate for some, NASA has said the asteroid will pass safely to Earth.
The space agency has revealed that the asteroid will pass nearly four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, what is known as the lunar distance.
According to NASA, asteroid 2020 VL1 travels at five kilometers per second.
It’s 18,000 kilometers per hour, and while it may seem fast, it’s actually relatively slow compared to the average speed of asteroids, which is 18 kilometers per second.
Even if the asteroid were to change course and head towards Earth, it is only 13 meters wide, which means it would simply burn in the atmosphere, posing no threat to the planet.
Although the asteroid may seem like a considerable distance, NASA has described it as a near-Earth object (NEO).
NEOs offer NASA the perfect opportunity to study the history of the solar system.
NASA said: “NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been propelled by the gravitational pull of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood.
“The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is largely due to their status as debris that remained relatively unchanged from the solar system’s formation process some 4.6 billion years ago.
“The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) were formed from a cluster of billions of comets and the leftovers of this formation process are the comets we see today.
“Similarly, today’s asteroids are the leftover pieces from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets which include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
“As early and advanced building blocks of the solar system’s formation process, comets and asteroids offer clues to the chemical mix from which planets formed some 4.6 billion years ago.
“If we want to know the composition of the primordial mixture from which the planets formed, then we need to determine the chemical constituents of the debris remaining from this formation process – the comets and asteroids.”
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