Asteroid 2005 YU55 To Narrowly Skip Earth

An asteroid a quarter-mile-wide will, astronomically talking, narrowly skip Earth following week.

And even though it is the closest an asteroid this dimension has come towards the residence world considering that 1976, there is no ought to contact Bruce Willis ... yet.

"There is not any chance that your object will collide when using the Earth or moon," Don Yeomans, the supervisor of NASA's Close to Earth Object Plan company, instructed Reuters.

But that does not imply the asteroid -- named 2005 YU55 -- won't be considered a danger to earth later on.

Lance Benner, a exploration scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, claimed in a video clip from NASA (available beneath) that researchers haven't been able to reliably compute the asteroid's route over and above a few hundred decades from now.

At its closest position, the space rock might be about 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) absent, which happens to be 0.85 the distance in between the moon and the Earth. NASA says that the asteroid will achieve this level at six:28 p.m. Est on Tuesday.

"In impact, it'll be relocating straight at us from a person route, and after that go whizzing by immediately from us within the other route," Benner said.

An asteroid this dimensions -- which, according to Scientific American is greater than an aircraft carrier -- would induce common injury regardless of whether ended up to hit Earth, nevertheless. The Associated Press spoke to Jay Melosh, a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University, who claimed the asteroid would create a four-mile large crater one,700 ft deep. It could bring about 70-foot tsunami waves and shake the bottom like a magnitude-7 earthquake.

Even though the asteroid are going to be inside the orbit from the moon, NASA explained the house rock's gravitational pull should have no "detectable effect" on Earth's tectonic plates or tides.

Yeomans told HuffPost the flyby gives astronomers an incredible see of 2005 YU55 and is also a chance to accomplish exploration in to the asteroid's composition. He claimed that it is a C-Type asteroid, meaning it is made up of carbon-based minerals which may potentially be utilized in foreseeable future space exploration.

"These objects are essential for science ... they're prospective resources for uncooked components in space that people may well wish to take benefit of some day," he claimed.

The new York Days documented very last month on proposed fuel stations in area that one particular review states could put astronauts on asteroid by 2024.