A Giant Asteroid Bigger Than Eiffel Tower Will Fly Past Earth Next Week, Says NASA

The asteroid will fly by the planet at a distance of 3.9 million kilometres -- greater than 10 times of that between the Earth and the Moon, according to NASA

New Delhi: A giant asteroid bigger than the Eiffel Tower will race past the Earth on December 11, NASA has warned.  However, the asteroid won't be threat to humanity.

The asteroid, named 4660 Nereus, is reportedly 330 metre-long and has been categorised as "potentially hazardous", reports said. The asteroid will fly by the planet at a distance of 3.9 million kilometres -- greater than 10 times of that between the Earth and the Moon, according to NASA's register of all space debris. It is travelling at 14,700 miles per hour.

Asteroid 4600 Nereus - All You Need To Know

Asteroid 4660 Nereus was spotted for the first time on February 10, 1982, by astronomer Eleanor Helin. Nereus is a member of the Apollo group of asteroids that are known for crossing the path of the Earth as it orbits the Sun.

The asteroid, which orbits the Sun every 664 days, is predicted not to come close to the Earth again until March 2, 2031 and then November 2050, reports said.

It is a frequent visitor to Earth's neighbourhood and had last made its closest approach to the planet in 2002, reports said. This made Nereus the prime candidate for Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to send their Hayabusa spacecraft. JAXA eventually settled for another asteroid named 25143 Itokawa. 

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a first-of-its-kind mission that will investigate and demonstrate a method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid's motion in space.

The DART spacecraft will crash into an asteroid named Dimorphos next year. Dimorphos is part of a binary asteroid system named Didymos, and orbits the other asteroid within the system.