Asteroid nearly 500m has just passed the Earth

NASA says an asteroid with a diameter three times larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt flew past Earth yesterday.

Simulation of an asteroid grazing the Earth.

Asteroid named 2015 DR215 is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), according to NASA. However, 2015 DR215 will not crash into Earth in the near future. NASA's Center for Near-Earth Objects (CNEOS) said the object was flying towards Earth. But even at its closest distance, 2015 DR215 is still about 6.6 million kilometers from our planet, more than 17 times the distance to Earth.

CNEOS estimates the maximum diameter of 2015 DR215 to be 488m, which is 3.5 times the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza (138m). The minimum diameter of the celestial body is about 220m. 2015 DR215 moved at a speed of about 29,773km/h when it flew past Earth at 13:41 on March 11.

2015 DR215 orbits the Sun faster than Earth. This is common with asteroids coming relatively close to Earth. In 2028, 2015 DR215 will pass by our planet again, according to CNEOS data.

An asteroid is classified as a PHA if it comes closer to Earth than 7.5 million km or has a diameter of 150m or more. Astronomers are monitoring thousands of asteroids in the Solar System, including many PHAs, to make sure none of them pose a danger to Earth. As of March 7, they have discovered about 28,000 near-Earth asteroids, 1,000 of which are over 1km in diameter.

Asteroid-Earth collisions have occurred many times in the past. In 2013, an asteroid the size of a house exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, releasing an energy equivalent to 440,000 metric tons of TNT, accompanied by a glass pulse wave that broke window glass over a range of 518 square kilometers.