A Bus-Massed Asteroid ‘2017 BX’ To Get Ahead Of Earth and Moon Today
An asteroid holding a school bus sized mass will get ahead of our mother planet tonight, noticed the scientists. The bus-sized asteroid – dubbed as “2017 BX” will pass between earth and the moon tonight, coming 30% nearer to the outer edge of the earth than the moon. It is less than three weeks, when an asteroid, with the size of a building slide near Earth from an approximate distance of halfway to the Moon and now the possibility of a similar space rock zoom by our planet has raised concern bars among scientists.
The newly discovered space rock 2017 BX, nicknamed as ‘Rerun,’ will move toward the earth just before midnight (ET) on Tuesday night, and will take an extreme close trip to earth. As per the reports of scientist, the space rock will travel nearly 16,600 miles per hour (around 26,700 km/hr). Last Friday, the scientists came across the existence of the object, and soon after they tracked its route toward the earth. As said by the researchers, it will be a ‘close shave’ when the space rock will move across 162,000 miles of Earth. The closet approach of Asteroid ‘2017 BX’ to earth is estimated to take place Wednesday evening just before 9 p.m. PT. The exact timing of its closest approach to earth is at 4:54 UTC on January 25th or 11:54 EST, January 24th, 2017.
The discovery of the Asteroid 2017 BX dates back 20th January 2016. When it came within 162,252 miles (261,120 kilometers) surrounding of the earth, the scientists were able to notice its existence. The existence of this close-to-earth space rock is just more than two-thirds of earth’s distance to the moon. The size of the space rock is nearly 5–17 meters, with the height of 28.1. The ‘Rerun’ asteroid is nearly 13-46 feet wide and is moving at a tempo of over 16,600 miles per hour, which translates to 4.6 miles per second.
The Slooh astronomers are scheduled to make live broadcasting of the closet approach of the asteroid event. The broadcasting will be starting at 5:30 p.m. (EST). Though the passing event of astroid may sound alarming, ‘Rerun’ isn’t liable to cause any threat to the Earth.
