NASA finds new Empire State Building-sized asteroid; to make closest approach on Mar 24

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has warned that another potentially hazardous asteroid is hurtling towards the Earth and will make its closest approach on March 24. Bigger than the Empire state building, the space rock dubbed 2013 BO76 has a diameter of 450 metres and would skim past our planet from a distance of 51,11,759 kilometers. In addition to this, the massive asteroid would travel at a speed of 49,513 kilometers per hour although it poses no threat to the Earth considering the distance in between. 

(Image: JPL)

The JPL even released a map showing the orbit of the asteroid which overlaps that of the Earth and even Mars. In the picture, the asteroid's orbit can be spotted in the colour white whereas the orbit of Earth and Mars are represented in blue and red colours respectively. The asteroid 2013 BO76 came closest to our planet in 2013 and was about 78,88,295 kilometers from Earth. NASA's JPL has revealed that its next approach would be on July 14, 2033, when it will be at a distance of 1,91,85,926 kilometers. This space rock is the first one after an asteroid hit the Earth’s atmosphere over the Norwegian Sea just two hours before it was spotted. 

Threats due to last moment asteroid discoveries

The asteroid, which was first spotted using the Piszkéstető Observatory in northern Hungary, had entered the southwest of Jan Mayen, a Norwegian island nearly 470 kilometers off the east coast of Greenland and northeast Iceland. Named 2022 EB5, the asteroid was no bigger than two metres in size and NASA says that rocks of such size only get discovered a few minutes before their impact. "Very few of these asteroids have actually been detected in space and observed extensively prior to impact, basically because they are very faint until the last few hours", Paul Chodas from the JPL said.

Needless to say, the bigger the asteroid is, the earlier it can be spotted and less time would be needed to prepare for a potential impact. The agency assured that its goal is to keep track of such asteroids and to calculate their trajectories in order to have many years’ notice ahead of a potential impact should one ever be identified.