Hollywood has made many movies which try to show what’s going to happen should a massive asteroid impact Earth, fortunately some of the scenarios Hollywood has shown us haven’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean asteroids don’t fly close to our planet time and again. It has actually been revealed that a massive asteroid, the 1.5-mile wide 2003 SD220 to be precise, is going to fly close to the Earth this Christmas day. That’s close in space terminology since it will flypast at around 6.7 million miles away which is about 28 times further away than the moon.
NASA has released some photos of 2003 SD220 captured via radio telescopes, if you’ve not been following its journey in space, then you won’t be aware that it actually flies past our planet once every few years.
The space agency does mention that the close distance, 6.7 million miles is close when space is concerned, is not going to pose any danger to us mere mortals down on Earth, and it predicts that this will remain the case for the next 200 years, so we don’t have to worry about it landing on earth during our lifetime.
Don’t get excited about the opportunity to sneak a peek at this asteroid even though it’s going to fly past from a close distance, unless you own specialist telescopes which cost a pretty penny, you’re out of luck.