Three asteroids to whizz past Earth this weekend, NASA warns
Not one but three space rocks are going to whizz past our planet this weekend, NASA has warned.
The first asteroid, the 2018 VS1, will pass Earth at around 2pm on Saturday, measuring up to 92ft.
It will pass our planet safely 3.62 times as far as the distance from Earth too the moon.
Asteroid VR1 will pass shortly afterwards, 3.1 million miles from Earth.
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NASA said, ‘‘As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth.’
‘Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.’
And the last of the three, Asteroid VX1 will make a close pass shortly afterwards, slightly closer than Earth is to the moon.
None of the asteroids will hit our planet – and all are fairly small.
Sunday will also see the return of an asteroid shaped like a grinning skull.
The asteroid is set to fly past Earth on November 11 – after first being spotted in 2015, when it flew past Earth right on Halloween.
This flyby is going to be much less exhilarating, with the 2000ft rock (Asteroid 2015 TB145), flying past 24 million miles from our planet, NASA predicts.
That’s about a quarter of the distance from our planet to the sun.
Smaller rocks, like the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, will hit our planet every 10 to 100 years, experts say.
The asteroid which ‘blew up’ over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013, is thought to have been around 60 feet across.
During the 2013 Chelyabinsk event, 1500 people were injured and 7300 buildings damaged by the intense overpressure generated by the shockwave at Earth’s surface.
