If all goes to plan Nereus will shoot past our planet at 14,700 miles per hour later this month. The mission, known as a double asteroid redirection test, aimed at strengthening the Earth’s defence technologies against space debris. While Asteroid 4660 is larger than 90 per cent of known asteroids it is still classified as small and would be dwarfed by rocks in the ‘large’ category.Ĭoncerned about the damage that a larger asteroid could cause to Earth last week Nasa launched a spacecraft into an orbit in a bid to knock it from its path. While highly unlikely, that was the high-consequence scenario discussed by attendees at an Oct DART, which has a launch window opening in July 2021, will visit a binary asteroid system where two asteroids orbit one another and aim to deflect a small asteroid The Has NASA Issued Warning of Huge Rock to Hit Earth The Has NASA Issued Warning of Huge Rock to Hit Earth. The flying rock was first spotted in 1982 and makes an orbit of the sun every 664 days meaning it could return. While Nereus is expected to briefly cross paths with Earth we could run into it again in the future. However, anything that passes within 45m kilometres of Earth is considered a Near-Earth Object (NEO) and is monitored closely by NASA to check whether it is on a collision course with our planet. The giant piece of space debris is not expected to impact Earth with Nasa saying the closest the rock will come is 3.9m km away from the planet. In each panel, range increases down and Doppler frequency increases to the right, so illumination comes. NASA has said that the asteroid will be quite close to Earth, however, it will still be 2.6 million miles away, which is close to 11 times the distance between Earth and. Delay-Doppler radar images of Apophis obtained on 2021 March 8, 9, and 10 by transmitting with the 70 meter DSS-14 antenna at Goldstone and receiving with the 100 meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia. The giant hunk of space debris has been labelled Asteroid 4660 Nereus and will come within 4.6m miles of Earth, putting the asteroid in the “potentially hazardous” category. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has revealed that a massive asteroid named 2004 UE is all set to pass our planet Earth on Saturday (November 20, 2021). Nasa has warned that a huge 1,082 foot asteroid will break into Earth’s orbit next week.Īccording to reports the 492 foot long space rock will skim past us on 11 December.