Potentially Hazardous Asteroid to Whiz Past Earth Today

(Patria) - A potentially hazardous asteroid, 2024 MK, discovered only about ten days ago, will whiz past Earth today.

It is a fairly large object, estimated to have a diameter between 120 and 280 meters, reports Index.hr.

Space objects around 25 meters in size will most likely burn up upon entering Earth's atmosphere and cause little or no damage.

However, if this happens with an asteroid larger than 25 meters and smaller than one kilometer, the story is different. Such a space body could cause local damage in the impact area.

NASA states that a body larger than one kilometer could cause negative consequences on a global scale.

Although 2024 MK is larger than 100 meters, thus the size of a building, there is no reason for panic. Experts estimate it will pass very close to Earth, but at a safe distance.

According to the Virtual Telescope Project, the asteroid was discovered on June 16, 2024, and will pass at a distance of 295,000 km, which is about 77% of the average distance of the Moon from Earth.

It will be closest to us today at 3:49 PM local time, when its brightness will be magnitude 8.5.



That would be enough to track it with ordinary binoculars, but that will not be possible here as it will be daytime then.

If you wish to follow this event, you can visit the Virtual Telescope Project website, where they will broadcast the asteroid flyby live, or you can try to "catch" it with a telescope tonight.

"The asteroid was discovered on June 16, 2024, just 13 days before it will pass by Earth. It poses no danger to our planet, but the fact that we only recently discovered it highlights the need for an improved system for detecting potentially hazardous objects," writes ESA.

Asteroids, or NEO (Near-Earth objects), often fly relatively close to Earth, and the media tend to exaggerate statements about their danger solely based on their classification into the PHO and NEO categories, which have dramatic names. But what do these categories actually mean?

NEO is any object that passes near the Sun at a distance of less than 1.3 AU (astronomical unit). AU denotes the approximate distance of Earth from our star and amounts to 150 million kilometers. This means these are bodies that will pass close to our planet in a relative sense.

For example, some NEO category asteroid can pass within a distance of 6.3 million kilometers from our planet, which is actually quite far. For comparison, the Moon is on average 384,400 kilometers away from us.



A Potentially Hazardous Object (PHO) is a space body with a diameter greater than 140 meters that passes Earth at a distance of 0.05 AU (7,500,000 kilometers) or less.