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An asteroid more than a quarter of a mile (400 meters) wide will pass close to Earth on Wednesday, zooming in to a distance of just over a million miles (1.8 million km), but with no possibility of impact, according to scientists. NASA.
Smaller asteroids routinely pass closer to Earth, but 2014 J025, discovered in May 2014, will be the largest asteroid to approach the planet since 2004, flying only about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. 1.1 million miles (1.8 million km).
“We know the time when the object will be closest in seconds and the distance is known to be within hundreds of kilometers (miles),” Davide Farnocchia, a mathematician in NASA’s Near-Earth Object program, told the phone.
Having several years of data on the asteroid’s trajectory gives scientists the ability to predict its path very confidently, he added.
The asteroid, estimated to be between a quarter and three-quarters of a mile (600-1,400 meters) wide and twice as reflective as the Moon, will not be visible to the naked eye, but sky observers should be able to see with telescopes. domestic for one or two nights starting Wednesday.
J025’s approach will be closest to the asteroid for at least the next 500 years.
In 2004, the 5 km-wide asteroid Toutatis crossed about four lunar distances, or just under one million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth.
Amateur astronomers might observe J025’s journey, but Farnocchia said he and his colleagues have moved on to plotting even closer encounters, such as the 1999 asteroid AN10, an 800-meter-wide rock that was expected to pass only 236,000 miles (380,000 km). ). ) from Earth, or slightly less than the distance from the Moon, in 2027.
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