An asteroid skips the moon and visits Earth
A two-bus-sized asteroid passes through London's famous buses, about half the distance between us and the moon. The asteroid, known as the 2019 GC6, was observed on April 9 by the Catalina Sky Survey, near Tucson, Arizona.
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say the asteroid is moving toward Earth at a speed of more than 1,016 kilometers per hour and will pass Earth closer than the moon at 7:41 am Greenwich Mean Time.When this happens, the asteroid will be at its nearest location of the Earth where it will fly at a distance of 0.57 lunar distances.
The lunar distance is the distance from Earth to the Moon and is about 384,402 km, so the asteroid will pass the ground for a distance of 219108.9 km.
Although this may seem far away, it is very close to astronomical, and is the closest to any asteroid that will come to earth this year.
Shortly after its discovery, "2019 GC6" was placed on NASA's list of asteroids that could hit the Earth in the next 100 years, but was removed from the list later, after calculating the orbit of the asteroid more accurately.
As soon as the asteroid passes safely near the Earth, on Thursday, it will be the nearest point of Earth, again, on September 11, 2034, and will visit our planet again in 2041 and 2048.
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