Huge Asteroid 2022 PW headed for Earth! NASA reveals how dangerously close space rock will come

An asteroid as big as an aeroplane is headed straight for Earth. Lately, there have been many that have made their closest passes to earth. Scientists have classified many of them as potentially dangerous asteroids due to their close approaches to earth.

The asteroid, named Asteroid 2022 PW is already on its way to Earth travelling at a speed of nearly 25000kms per hour. Nearly 94-foot wide, Asteroid 2022 PW is almost the size of an aeroplane. It will pass Earth at a distance of merely 530,000kms. That is the one of the closest asteroid approaches we’ve seen so far this year!

Thankfully, this asteroid does not pose any risk to the planet. Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Studies Center says, “A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility anymore, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years.”

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office monitors the sky with telescopes and keeps a track of upcoming flybys by Near-Earth objects (NEOs). With the help of advanced telescopes, more than 750,000 asteroids have been discovered to date out of which over 27,000 are near-Earth asteroids.