Asteroid Possibly As Big As Empire State Building To Pass Earth This Week

The space rock, called 2013 BO76, will be traveling at just over 30,000 miles per hour when it makes its pass by our planet. Thankfully, although the asteroid is classed as “potentially hazardous” it’s expected to remain at a safe distance.

2013 BO76 is due to make its close approach on Thursday, March 24th, at 6:55 p.m. ET, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

It is important to remember that the term “close approach” is relative. Asteroids may sometimes make what astronomers deem to be a “close approach” to Earth at some points during their regular orbits around the sun, but in fact these close approaches can be several times further away from us than the moon is.

As such, at its closest point to Earth this week 2013 BO76 is expected to be around 3.1 million miles away—more than 13 times farther away than the moon.

Still, the space rock is large. According to the CNEOS asteroid database, 2013 BO76 is estimated to be between 656 and 1,476 feet wide—meaning it is even wider than the Empire State Building is tall.

2013 BO76’s size is part of the reason it is classed as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA). According to CNEOS, PHAs are defined based on an asteroid’s size as well as its potential to make threatening close passes to Earth.

Generally, an asteroid that can’t get any closer to Earth than about 4,650,000 miles or is smaller than about 500 feet in diameter is not considered to be a PHA.

In any case, after 2013 BO76 makes its close approach to Earth this week it’s not expected to cause any trouble for the foreseeable future. Orbital predictions show the space rock will not come so close to Earth again until the year 2193—which is when the data runs out.

Earlier this month of March, 2013 BO76 was photographed by Gianluca Masi, an astronomer at the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy.

The asteroid can be seen as a tiny white speck in the middle of the image below, highlighted by a white arrow against a backdrop of blurred stars. At the time the image was taken on March 5th, 2013 BO76 was about 14.9 million miles away.

Over the next 60 days, the closest a major asteroid is expected to come to Earth will be about 654,000 miles, which is around 2.7 times farther away than the moon, CNEOS data shows. That asteroid, 2012 UX68, is expected to pass our planet on May 15 and will have a maximum estimated diameter of around 300 feet.

title: “Asteroid Possibly As Big As Empire State Building To Pass Earth This Week” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-31” author: “Lucinda Ulloa”

The space rock, called 2022 BH7, will pass our planet on Friday whilst traveling at a speed of more than 50,000 miles per hour.

It will reach its closest distance to Earth at around 4:45 p.m. ET that day, when it will be around 1.4 million miles away—roughly six times as far away as the moon is.

As such, Earth will be perfectly safe during 2022 BH7’s pass. However, the asteroid is still classed as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

Asteroids are given this classification based on their size and their potential to make threatening close passes by our planet, though an asteroid can still be a PHA even if it’s not expected to hit Earth.

2022 BH7 meets this criteria, with its size estimated to be between 557 feet and 1,246 feet across, CNEOS data shows. This means that, at the upper limit, the asteroid could be nearly as wide as the Empire State Building is tall.

Again, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe when 2022 BH7 flies past. In fact, it’s common for many asteroids to come much, much closer. CNEOS data shows that the asteroid 2022 CO6 is due to fly past Earth on Tuesday and will come within just over half the distance between Earth and the moon.

2022 CO6 is still not expected to hit us, and in any case it is much smaller than 2022 BH7 with an estimated maximum diameter of around 144 feet.

While asteroid impacts may sound like the domain of Hollywood films, scientists take the threat they pose seriously. According to CNEOS, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 100 meters (328 feet) across would be expected to reach Earth’s surface once every 10,000 years or so on average. These would be large enough to cause local disasters, including tidal waves.

Once every several hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a kilometer (0.62 miles) across would be expected to collide with our planet, which would pose a threat to life on Earth.

A couple of notable asteroid impacts have occurred in recent history—both of them in Russia. One was the 1908 Tunguska event, thought to have been caused by a space rock with varying size estimates up to 300 feet in diameter.

It hit near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia, producing an explosive force of as much as 15 megatons of TNT, which is 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, according to Britannica. A NASA estimate puts the explosive force lower, equivalent to 185 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Then there was the Chelyabinsk asteroid which exploded around 14 miles above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. The house-sized asteroid caused a shock wave that blew out windows over 200 square miles, injuring over 1,600 people.