On September 1, an asteroid the size of a multi-storey building will pass near the Earth
The day after tomorrow, September 1, an asteroid with the designation 2011 ES4 will approach our planet. The Center for the Study of Near-Earth Objects of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research unit of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), reports.
The named object was discovered back in 2011. It belongs to the Apollo class: these are near-Earth asteroids, whose orbits cross the Earth’s orbit from the outside.
The size of the asteroid 2011 ES4 is comparable to a multi-story building: the cosmic body, according to various estimates, has a diameter of 22 to 49 meters.
On the first day of the coming autumn, the asteroid will be at a distance of approximately 120 thousand kilometers from our planet. For comparison: the distance between the Earth and the Moon is about 384 thousand kilometers. The speed of the object will be 8.16 kilometers per second. Fortunately, the asteroid poses no threat to Earth.
Note also that on November 2, another cosmic body, an asteroid with the designation 2018 VP1, will approach our planet. This body, about two meters across, could theoretically enter the earth’s atmosphere.
