A gigantic asteroid is coming our way and will zoom terrifyingly close to Earth on September 14.
The monster space rock is called 2000 QW7 and is thought to be up to 650 metres wide.
This means it could be more than twice as big as The Shard in London Bridge, which is about 310 metres tall.
Happily, the object will zoom past at a distance of about five million miles from Earth at a speed of more than 23,000 kilometres per hour.
The last time it came past Earth was in 2000 and we’ll see it again in 2038.
Elon Musk recently warned that Earth has ‘no defence’ against gigantic asteroids.
The billionaire issued this chilling assessment of our planetary defence capabilities after his friend Joe Rogan shared a story from a British newspaper which discussed how Nasa is preparing for the arrival of a space rock named after an Egyptian ‘God of Chaos’ called Apophis.
Musk tweeted: ‘Great name! Wouldn’t worry about this particular one, but a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defence.’
The 340-metre wide behemoth is on a path which brings it within such a short distance of our planet’s surface that Nasa once feared it was going to hit us.
Luckily, subsequent calculations showed the object was going to miss us and pass within just 19,000 miles of our planet’s surface – a hair’s breadth in cosmic terms.
‘The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science,’ said Marina Brozović, a radar scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who works on radar observations of near-Earth objects (NEOs).
‘We’ll observe the asteroid with both optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we might be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size.’
Great name! Wouldn’t worry about this particular one, but a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense. https://t.co/XhY8uoNNax
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2019
If Apophis did hit a city like London, it would wipe out millions of people and create a crater roughly three miles wide, but our species would probably survive.
It’s only when space rocks are half a mile wide or larger that they start to pose an existential threat to humanity because larger objects could throw so much dust and debris into the air that sunlight is blocked so plants across the planet can no longer grow.
In a piece of cosmic irony, Apophis will fly past on Friday, April 13, 2029.
Astronomers around the world will train their telescopes on the asteroid.
The asteroid was discussed at Nasa’s annual Planetary Defence Conference this week, where scientists and disaster planners also simulated an asteroid apocalypse in order to practice their emergency response.
‘Apophis is a representative of about 2,000 currently known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs),” said Paul Chodas, director of Nasa’s Centre for Near Earth Objects Studies (CNEOS).
‘By observing Apophis during its 2029 flyby, we will gain important scientific knowledge that could one day be used for planetary defence.’
Nasa's guide to viewing Apophis
‘On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper. But it won’t be a satellite or an airplane—it will be a 340-meter-wide near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 km) above the surface. That’s within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth.
‘It’s rare for an asteroid of this size to pass by the Earth so close. Although scientists have spotted small asteroids, on the order of 5-10 meters, flying by Earth at a similar distance, asteroids the size of Apophis are far fewer in number and so do not pass this close to Earth as often.
‘The asteroid, looking like a moving star-like point of light, will first become visible to the naked eye in the night sky over the southern hemisphere, flying above Earth from the east coast to the west coast of Australia. It will be mid-morning on the East Coast of the United States when Apophis is above Australia. It will then cross the Indian Ocean, and by the afternoon in the eastern U.S. it will have crossed the equator, still moving west, above Africa. At closest approach, just before 6 p.m. EDT, Apophis will be over the Atlantic Ocean – and it will move so fast that it will cross the Atlantic in just an hour. By 7 p.m. EDT, the asteroid will have crossed over the United States.’
In 2013, Nasa calculated that Apophis would not hit Earth.
‘We have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036,’ said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.
‘The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future.’
However, it said the ‘April 13, 2029, flyby of asteroid Apophis will be one for the record books’ because of how close the object will come to our planet.
Last month an asteroid big enough to kill millions zoomed past the planet just a few days after it was spotted.
If it had been on a collision course with Earth, we could have done little to protect ourselves and would have had to watch helplessly as the space rock ploughed into our homeworld.
After this flyby, the European Space Agency issued an urgent call for more ‘eyes on the sky’ to make sure we don’t get caught by ‘surprise’ again.
On July 25, astronomers watched as a 100-metre wide object called 2019 OK came within 65 000 km of our planet’s surface – which is roughly one-fifth of the distance to the Moon.
The rock had actually been ‘previously been observed but wasn’t recognised as a near-Earth asteroid,’ ESA admitted.
Now it’s hoping to learn from this mistake and make sure every asteroid heading our way is located and identified well ahead of time.
‘This ‘un-recognition’ of an asteroid, despite it being photographed will be used to test the software going into ESA’s upcoming asteroid-hunting telescope, the Flyeye,’ said Rüdiger Jehn, ESA’s Head of Planetary Defence.
Nasa will be sure to keep a close eye on Asteroid 2006 QQ23, which is set to pass by Earth on August 10.
The massive rock, which has been estimated at 570m in diameter and bigger than New York’s Empire State Building, has been classified as a ‘near-Earth object’ (NEO).
It will make its closest approach to Earth at a distance of 4.6 million miles at some time just after 3am.
The asteroid was discovered over a decade ago in 2006, which gives it part of its designated title.
The American space agency says there’s no danger of the wayward rock hitting us, which is a very good thing. Even though the asteroid isn’t a big as some out there, it’s large enough to create widespread devastation if it impacted on Earth.
A land impact could obliterate an entire city while a plunge into the ocean could cause tsunamis that impact low-lying land.
In either scenario, the asteroid would change the climate for many years.
Nasa estimates it has already found over 90 percent of near-Earth objects measuring one kilometre or larger – which would have catastrophic global effects in the event of a collision.
But, smaller space rocks are much harder to detect.
The space agency has been working to pinpoint NEOs in the 140-meter range, with a goal of identifying at least 90 percent of these objects.
According to Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) manager Paul Chodas there are very few asteroids identified by NASA that have a chance of hitting Earth, one of which, Bennu, is the subject of frequent monitoring by the agency.
Bennu is as wide as five football fields and weighs around 79 billion kilograms, which is 1,664 times heavier than the Titanic.
It has a 1 in 2,700-chance of striking Earth between 2175 and 2199 – which is really very small, so there’s no need to worry unduly for your great, great grandchildren’s safety.
Luckily for us, Elon Musk has already joined forces with Nasa to help defend our planet against doomsday space rocks.