A 1000-Foot Wide Asteroid is Heading Towards Earth: NASA

A 1,000-foot asteroid categorized as a “Potentially Hazardous Asteroid” (PHA) is heading towards Earth and will pass us on 11 December, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has warned.

The asteroid is known as 4660 Nereus and was discovered by Eleanor Helin in 1982. It is larger than 90% of the asteroids and is almost three times the size of a football pitch or roughly the size of the Eiffel tower.

However, NASA has confirmed that there is no need to panic as its Asteroid Tracker has predicted that 4660 Nereus will pass by Earth at a distance of 3.9 million kilometers, a distance that is 10 times greater than that between the Earth and Moon.

NASA categorizes asteroids as PHA that are at least 500-foot tall and fly within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth.

4660 Nereus belongs to the Apollo group known for flying close to Earth as it orbits the Sun. It completes one orbit around the Sun in 664 days.

Although 4660 Nereus is unlikely to hit the Earth in the future, NASA’s Asteroid Tracker has predicted that it will fly close to the Earth 12 more times each after a decade. It is expected to next pass by Earth in March 2031 and then in 2050 and so on.

4660 Nereus will be the closest to Earth in February 2060 as it will be only 1.1 million kilometers away. To put it into perspective, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is around 384,400 kilometers.

It is accessible by spacecraft due to its close proximity to Earth. So far, only NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have landed spacecraft on asteroids.

NASA and JAXA previously mulled over exploring 4660 Nereus before deciding on other asteroids. Last month, the UAE announced to explore asteroids. It will be the first Arab country to do so when it will launch its mission in 2028.