NASA warns of aircraft-sized asteroid set to pass Earth today

Despite almost 5 asteroids passing by Earth extremely closely yesterday, none of them came close enough to impact the surface. As these space rocks revolve around the Sun in their elliptical orbits, they also rotate, sometimes quite erratically, tumbling as they go, according to NASA. Colossal asteroids have been responsible for some of the biggest events in history. From the Chelyabinsk disaster that caused many casualties and damages worth millions to the one which caused the extinction of dinosaurs nearly 65 million of years ago, whenever asteroids have crashed on Earth, they have impacted lives and changed Earth forever.

Now, NASA has warned that another asteroid is on its way today and it will come mighty close to Earth.

Asteroid 2011 WR41 key details

An asteroid named Asteroid 2011 WR41 is already on its way towards Earth travelling at a staggering speed of 32216 kilometers per hour and is expected to just miss the planet today, January 3. It will make its closest approach to Earth at a distance of 6 million kilometers, according to NASA. NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office has warned that Asteroid 2011 WR41 is colossal in size with a width between 82 feet and 183 feet, making it nearly as big as a commercial aircraft!

According to NASA, the Asteroid 2011 WR41 belongs to the main Apollo group of asteroids, which are a group of Near-Earth asteroids named after the humongous 1862 Apollo asteroid, discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.

Did you know?

A new study has revealed that dinosaurs were in their prime when the fateful asteroid struck, sending them into extinction. The study revealed that dinosaurs were in the prime of their lives during the late Cretaceous period when the asteroid ended their lives abruptly. According to phys.org, the study was conducted by the University of Edinburgh and published in the Science Advances journal. Fossil records were studied to reconstruct the food webs of these creatures 1000 years before and after the asteroid strike. This information was used to study how some mammals and birds survived this mass extinction event. Over 1600 fossil specimens were studied which included nearly every type of animal that became food during the late Cretaceous period.

It was revealed that the dinosaurs had a stable place in the ecological web without any signs of decline of their food sources, according to lead author of the study Jorge Garci-Giron, an ecologist with both Finland’s University of Oulu and Spain’s University of Leon.