HONG KONG: A mountain-size asteroid will zoom past Earth Monday (Jan. 26), marking the closest pass by such a large space rock until 2027.
Due to the large size of the asteroid, which scientists at NASA believe to be approximately 1,800 feet across, people who want to catch a glimpse of the space rock should be able to from their backyards with the assistance of the aforementioned telescopic equipment.
BL86 will pass be roughly 745,000 miles from Earth when it passes by at its closest point. Fox News points out that this is approximately three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon and while this distance might not seem all that close, experts consider it the width of a fingernail in respect to lunar distances.
The asteroid, which is estimated to be roughly six football fields in length, was first discovered in 2004 and is believed by experts at NASA to be the closest encounter we’ll have with a huge asteroid until the next one passes by the planet in 2027. The next huge asteroid to flyby within close proximity will be 1999 AN10.
Although the asteroid orbits the Sun every 1.84 years, viewing it is a once-in-a-lifetime event, as Monday marks the closest the asteroid will get to Earth until its return a couple hundred of years from now, Science Times reports
. NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Pasadena, California, Don Yeomans, indicated that the asteroid “poses no threat to Earth” within the foreseeable future, but it will provide researchers with what he called a “unique opportunity to observe and learn more” about the massive asteroid.
