School-bus sized Asteroid 2020 SW to pass close to Earth on September 24

Since its formation, NASA has been watching over and tracking the movement of Asteroids. Currently, the space agency is tracking the course of several hundreds of asteroids that could potentially be hazardous to human life on Earth. NASA has deployed multiple Asteroid watching satellites and also maintains a record of their course with the help of NASA Asteroid watch data on its official website. Recently, the space agency revealed on its NASA JPL website that an asteroid the size of a school bus will be flying very close to earth on September 24. Read on to know more.

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Asteroid 2020 SW to fly by close to Earth 

According to a report on NASA’s JPL website, Asteroid 2020 SW will fly by close to Earth on Sept 24. At its closest approach, the space rock will be only 0.00019 astronomical units away from Earth’s surface. In miles, this is 17661.6 miles. While it might seem like a huge distance, but in anatomical terms, this is one of the closest asteroid approaches in recent times. This distance is also well below many of the communications satellites orbiting our planet. The closest approach will occur over the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

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Asteroid 2020 SW is 18 feet long and will be the closest to Earth at 11:13 UTC which is 4:13 am on Thursday, Pacific Time (PT). It has been classified among the Apollo class of Asteroids. The Apollo asteroids are a group of near-Earth asteroids which have been named after the 1862 Apollo asteroid. It was discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.

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NASA has revealed that as of 2020 more than 10,000 asteroids have made it to the class of Apollo. It is a relief that NASA has claimed that 2020 SW will not hit Earth and once it's gone, the space rock won't be back in Earth's neighbourhood until 2041. Given that the asteroid is only 18 feet in size, by asteroid standards, it can be considered puny.

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On its website, NASA has stated that Asteroids of this size hit Earth's atmosphere and burn up once every year or two. There are as many as 100 million of these little asteroids out there. The only real threat posed to life on Earth comes from considerably bigger asteroids. And fortunately, they are easier to spot.

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