Asteroid bigger than London Eye to zoom past Earth on July 24, warns NASA

In what could be a thrilling experience for sky gazers across the world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has warned that a gigantic and ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid will pass by Earth on July 24.

According to NASA, the humongous asteroid is bigger than the famous London Eye which is 443 feet high and will make its closest approach to Earth on July 24.

"Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth," the NASA said on its website.

"Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less and an absolute magnitude (H) of 22.0 or less are considered PHAs," it added.

Warning over its upcoming approach, Birmingham Live quoted the space agency as saying: “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.”

“Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs,” it added further.

Recently, NASA on its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website said: “NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the Solar System formation process some 4.6 billion years ago.”

Informing more about the nature of the asteroids, the agency said, “The giant outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) formed from an agglomeration of billions of comets and the leftover bits and pieces from this formation process are the comets we see today. Likewise, today’s asteroids are the bits and pieces left over from the initial agglomeration of the inner planets that include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.” NASA

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