The speedy asteroid, dubbed Asteroid 2019 KG3, is barreling towards an “Earth Close Approach” trajectory. The news comes less than two weeks after the asteroid was found flying around the solar system on May 29. NASA now predicts KG3 will streak past our home planet in the wee morning hours of Tuesday, June 11. And according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, the space rock’s closest flyby will occur around 7.15am UK time or 2am Eastern.
Asteroid KG3 is a small asteroid belonging to the Amor family of space rocks.
Amor asteroids are all space rocks whizzing around the Sun on orbits similar to Asteroid 1221 Amor.
If the asteroids orbit the Sun from a minimal distance of 120.8 million miles (194.5 million km) NASA classifies them as “Near-Earth Objects” or NEOs.
NEOs are all comets and asteroids, which orbit the Sun from a distance of 1.3 astronomical units.
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Just one astronomical unit measure around 93 million miles (149.6 million km) – the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
NASA said: “As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth.
“Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.”
Asteroid KG3 is an NEO estimated to hurtle around the Sun at speeds of around 6.76km per second or 15,121.7mph (24,336kph).
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The asteroid is further estimated to measure somewhere in the range of 55.7ft to 128ft (17m to 39m) in diameter.
At the upper end of NASA’s scale, the space rock is comparable in size to about 19 Queen Size beds lined-up in a row.
At the same time, Asteroid KG3 is as big as nine-and-a-half Volkswagen Beetle cars and four-and-a-half London double-decker buses.
Thankfully, asteroids within this estimate would most likely explode in the atmosphere and only cause indirect image from the shockwave.
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But just how close does NASA expect the rock to fly by tomorrow?
At its closest, Asteroid KG3 will come flying by from a distance of around 0.04187 astronomical units.
This means the asteroid will approach our planet from a safe distance of about 3.89 million miles (6.26 million km).
In other words, the asteroid will fly by about 16.3 times as far as the Moon is from Earth.
