An Asteroid, twice as big as the Pyramid of Giza to cross paths with the Earth’s orbit today, 6th September. It has been dubbed as “rocky horrors” and “dangerous asteroid.” The asteroid is called the Apollo asteroid, due to its close proximity with our planet.
This Asteroid is called (465824) 2010 FR. It has a diameter of 162 metres according to Centre for Near Earth Object Studies.
The asteroid was discovered on 18th of March by the Catalina Sky Survey.
It is twice the size of the Big Ben and advancing at an exceptionally high speed of 14km per second.
Will the Asteroid 2010 FR collide?
NASA’s tweet: “Our Planetary Defence experts are not worried about the asteroid 2010 FR and you shouldn’t be either because it has zero chance of hitting the Earth. It will pass safely by our planet on September 6th. 6 more than 4.6 millions miles away that’s more than 19 times the distance of our moon.”
Virtual Telescope Project on the Asteroid:
2010 FR shall pass at a close distance of more than 7.5 million kilometres from the Earth. Some researchers at the Virtual Telescope Project snapped some shots, of the fast approaching giant rock on September 4th.
The Virtual Telescope Project researches claim: “The telescope carefully tracked the apparent motion of the asteroid, so stars result in long trails, while the asteroid looks like a sharp dot of light in the centre of the image. It is marked by an arrow.”
The Full Moon was not far in the sky ,so the image was taken under less than ideal conditions: despite this Asteroid 2010 FR is well visible. At the imaging time, asteroid (465824) 2010 FR was at about 7.8 millions of kilometres from the Earth and it was slowly approaching us.”
There is nothing to worry about as NASA has assured there shall be no collision. 2010 FR is not the first asteroid to cross Earth’s path. Everyday, small fragments of asteroids and comets called meteroids virtually explode in the Earth’s atmosphere. This results in beautiful bright ‘meteor showers.’
