‘Potentially dangerous’ asteroid the size of a skyscraper will fly past Earth on Tuesday

A “potentially dangerous” asteroid the size of a skyscraper will speed past Earth on Tuesday (September 17). according to NASA.

The skyscraper size asteroidcalled 2024 ON, has an estimated diameter of between 220 and 480 meters and will race past the Earth at 31,933 km/h – about 26 times the speed of sound.

At its closest approach, the asteroid will be about 1 million kilometers from Earthabout 2.6 times the average distance between the Earth and the moon. By cosmic standards, this is an incredibly small distance – but still far enough that no earthling has to worry about the space rock flying past.

NASA considers any space object that comes closer than 120 million miles (193 million km) to Earth as a “near-Earth object” and classifies any large object within 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) of our planet as a “potentially dangerous.” NASA tracks the locations and orbits of about 28,000 asteroids and tracks them with the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), an array of four telescopes that scan the entire night sky every 24 hours.

NASA has estimated the trajectories of all of these near-Earth objects beyond the end of the century. There is no known threat of an apocalyptic asteroid impact on Earth in the next 100 years. according to NASA.

Related: Why do asteroids and comets have such strange shapes?

If 2024 ON were to hit the Earth, it would not be a catastrophic event like the 12 km wide Dinosaur killing asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago. But that does not mean that its effects are not far-reaching. For example, the explosion of an 18 m wide meteor over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013 generated an explosive force equivalent to about 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, i.e. 26 to 33 times as much energy as the Hiroshima bomband around 1,500 people injured.

A graphic showing the orbit of asteroid 2024 ON (white ellipse) compared to the planets of the solar system (Image credit: NASA / JPL)

Understanding asteroid trajectories can be harder than it first seems because of something called the Yarkovsky effect. The effect, named after the 19th-century engineer who first proposed it, means that space rocks absorb and emit enough impulsive light over long periods of time to slightly alter their orbits. This means that quantifying the Yarkovsky effect is crucial to predicting which asteroids pose a potential threat.

Space agencies around the world are already working on ways to divert a dangerous asteroid should it ever come our way. On September 26, 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft redirected the benign asteroid Dimorphos by take it off coursewhich changed the asteroid's orbit by 32 minutes, which was the first test of Earth's planetary defense system. NASA has since welcomed the mission as a success beyond all expectations.

China also said It is in the early planning stages of an asteroid redirection mission. By ramming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, which will enter a 7.4 million kilometer orbit around the Earth between the years 2175 and 2199, scientists hope to divert the space rock even further from its current trajectory.

For those who want to follow the course of 2024 ON as it passes by our planet, the Virtual Telescope Project a live feed of its path from September 15 at 19:30 UTCwhen the object will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

‘Potentially dangerous’ asteroid the size of a skyscraper will fly past Earth on Tuesday

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