oral sex up , everyone ! A football game pitch - sized asteroid will narrowly birr past Earth on the nighttime of Tuesday , May 15 , 2018 .
The asteroid , catchily namedAsteroid 2010 WC9 , will safely guide Earth at a aloofness of approximately 203,450 kilometre ( 126,419 miles ) , as reported byEarth Sky . That ’s just half of the aloofness between the Earth and the Moon , making it one of the closest approaches of an asteroid this size the world has ever observed .
The physical object is believed to be somewhere between 60 and 130 time ( 197 and 427 fundament ) in length , so it will be around the size of it of a football pitch or the duration of the Statue of Liberty .
The asteroid will zip past Earth at a speed of approximately 46,100 kilometre ( 28,650 miles ) per hour and make its stuffy overture to Earth at 6.05pm EDT ( 10.05pm GMT ) . However , just because this is a relatively close approach , astronomers are saying you should not wait to see 2010 WC9 with the au naturel middle .
Asteroid 2010 WC9 was actually lost by astronomer for a number of age . When it was first discover in previous 2010 , stargazer did n’t have enough observation to predict its orbit as it was too faint to see . Just last week , astronomers picked up on an nameless asteroid ( or so they thought ) . Further work show that the quad rock’n’roll was really asteroid 2010 WC9 .
Remarkably , losing track of small near - Earth object such as this is remarkably common . As highlight ina brand new survey , it ’s thought as many as 900 have been keep once then never interpret again in other surveys of the night sky . For a little bit of context of use , throw your mind back to the now - notoriousChelyabinsk Meteorthat exploded over a Russian city on the forenoon of February 15 , 2013 , which no stargazer wait .
While you should n’t ask the same levels of damage due to this fiendish event in Russia , the story of asteroid 2010 WC9 serves as a serious reminder to astronomers to keep on their toes .
