Planet Earth and big asteroid in the space. Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs). Asteroid in outer space near Earth planet.
On Saturday, an asteroid that is believed to be larger than 120 metres wide will make a close flyby to Earth.An illustration depicts an asteroid near Earth. Asteroid 2024 MK will pass roughly 290,000 km from our planet on Saturday. Earth is surrounded by rocky bodies and bits of debris from when the solar system formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. On Saturday, one of those leftover rocks will whiz past Earth.
According to Alan Fitzsimmons, a planetary scientist at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, at its closest, 2024 MK will be visible from the southern hemisphere. The following night it will be in the constellation Scorpius, which is low in the south in Canada. Both Brown and Fitzsimmons say that at any one time there is a 10-metre asteroid somewhere between Earth and the moon. Essentially, Earth is plowing through debris all the time. Meteors burn up in our atmosphere all the time, it's just that most of them are small and go unnoticed. Brown said that even bigger impacts may go unnoticed as they may impact over the ocean.
Then in 2013, the reminder that we're in a cosmic shooting gallery hit home. On February 15, a 20-metre wide rock impacted overFitzsimmons said that Asteroid Day is a reminder that we're not just sitting ducks.
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