Asteroid Three Times The Size Of The Taj Mahal Will Approach Earth July 24, Dangerous?

Asterois, big again will hit Earth (photo: NASA Photo Earth Illustration via Unsplash)

JAKARTA - An asteroid the size of the Taj Mahal will pass Earth on 24 July. The event was disclosed by NASA and they have categorized this flying object as an Apollo class asteroid.

Apollo category asteroids are asteroids that have a near-Earth orbit. It is named after the asteroid Apollo 1862 which was discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth.

If depicted, the asteroid has the size of a stadium, or three times the size of the Taj Mahal. The size of the asteroid which is about 220 meters in diameter passes at a distance of 4.7 million kilometers from Earth.

Dubbed Asteroid 2008Go20, it is traveling at a speed of about 28,800 km per hour towards Earth. Quoted from Live Mint, Thursday, July 22, NASA said there was nothing to worry about, the asteroid would be safe to move past Earth.

The US space agency also said the asteroid would be very close to Earth, but would still be 0.04 au (a astronomical unit) from Earth (3,718,232 miles). The moon is about 238,606 miles from Earth.

Asteroid 2008Go20 won't come any closer than 2,605,509 miles, but NASA has classified it as a Near-Earth Object, and will continue to monitor its movement. For information, Asteroid 2008 Go20 will fly past Earth on July 24 at 3:35 p.m. Eastern Time.

An asteroid is basically the fragments and debris left behind from the formation of the Solar System. It is considered a Near-Earth Object when its distance from our planet is less than 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, according to NASA's Joint Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which tracks and studies the movement of asteroids.

This is not the first time that an asteroid has been identified as a Near-Earth Object. In September 2020, an asteroid called 2020 QL also shot past Earth.