Everyone’s talking about the skyscraper-sized asteroid that’s cruising by Earth today

[Mike Wehner]

NASA is always on the lookout for potential threats from space. This includes bursts of radiation from the Sun, manmade objects tumbling back into our atmosphere, and of course objects like asteroids and comets. Today, one of the latter is going to be making a relatively close flyby of Earth, and NASA has deemed it a potential threat due to its expected proximity during its closest approach. The object is an asteroid called 2021 KT1, and it's believed to be roughly 600 feet in diameter. If placed on Earth's surface it would be as tall as a skyscraper, and if it struck Earth it would cause considerable damage. Thankfully, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Scientists have, over time, grouped objects in space into two groups. If an asteroid or comet is greater than 4.6 million miles from Earth it's considered to be "safe," at least as far as we can predict its future. Objects that fall within 4.6 million miles are considered "potentially hazardous" due to the fact that they could interact with Earth or the Moon at some point in the near future. 2021 KT1 is one of those potentially hazardous objects, but only by a small margin. During its pass by Earth today, it's expected to reach a distance of 4.5 million miles.

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Everyone’s talking about the skyscraper-sized asteroid that’s cruising by Earth today originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 1 Jun 2021 at 15:07:31 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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