Asteroid The Size Of Cheops Pyramid Flew Close To Earth
The newly discovered asteroid 2024 MK flew past Earth on Saturday, June 29. The space rock came 295 thousand kilometers closer to our planet, which is three-quarters of the distance between the Moon and Earth. This was reported on the official NASA website.
MK 2024 was first noticed by astronomers from South Africa on June 16, 2024.
As the American space agency clarified, 2024 MK flew at a speed of 34 thousand kilometers per hour. The dimensions of the object are 146 meters, which approximately corresponds to the height of a 40-story building or the Cheops pyramid in Egypt.
The idea that an asteroid whose diameter varies between 120 and 260 meters could be seen by humans just two weeks before a potential collision with Earth is frightening. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), an asteroid of this size is too small to cause catastrophic consequences if it collided with our planet, but it would still cause “significant damage.” If 2024 MK was approaching Earth, and not flying approximately 290 thousand km from it, people simply would not have had enough time to prepare and carry out any operation to change the astroid’s flight path, similar to the DART mission that NASA carried out previously.
According to NASA calculations, there is not a single asteroid known today that would pose a threat to our planet for at least the next 100 years.
