An asteroid the size of a football field is approaching Earth (5 photos)

Today, an asteroid called 2008 OS7 will fly past our planet. A celestial body with a diameter of almost half a kilometer will pass at a distance of approximately 2.7 million kilometers from Earth.





2008 OS7 was classified as potentially dangerous because it flies close enough to our planet and therefore could cause significant damage in the event of a collision.

According to calculations, the object will approach the Earth at 17:41 Moscow time.



According to experts, the fall of an asteroid with a diameter of 450 m on the city will lead to the formation of a crater 17 km wide, more than 2 million people will instantly die. And the fiery wave will claim the lives of another 11 million people.

“We don’t have to worry about this because the asteroid will not enter the Earth’s atmosphere, but will still come close to it,” commented Minjae Kim, a member of the physics department at the University of Warwick.

"There are millions of asteroids in our solar system, of which about 2,350 objects are classified as potentially dangerous."





Asteroid monitoring is carried out by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

All asteroids with a diameter greater than 140 meters and passing at a distance of less than 7.5 million kilometers fall into the potentially dangerous category.

The next approach of a potentially hazardous asteroid, 99942 Apophis, to Earth will occur on April 14, 2029.

It was believed that Apophis would come dangerously close to our planet in 2068, but experts have since revised their calculations.



On January 21, asteroid 2024 BX1 exploded in the Earth's atmosphere over Germany. The space object was about a meter in diameter. NASA observers spotted it 90 minutes before approach.

Meteorite hunters have already found several fragments of 2024 BX1.